The crisis of globalization and the new global geopolitical balances between the United States and China: 2020–2025

Abstract

This article analyzes the main classical theories on international trade and how they are being challenged by their two main promoters: Great Britain and the United States. It describes how both powers are questioning the fundamental principles that have sustained them for 200 years. With Brexit and Donald Trump’s rise to the US presidency in 2017 and January 2025, so-called new nationalisms are emerging. British leaders are separating from Europe and Trump is starting a tariff war, identifying China as his main enemy. Secondly, it describes how the deep crisis in the globalization process between 2020 and 2025 constitutes a “strategic ambiguity” in the Western powers. This crisis manifests itself both in the changes in the geo-economic and geopolitical alliances between the world’s major powers and in their individual positions with regard to developing countries. Internally, in many countries, political polarization is calling into question liberal globalization and the foundations of international trade, through new national ideologies in powers seeking to regain past leadership, reviving militaristic careers in the present. Another factor analyzed is that the two conflicts prevailing in 2025 affect regional balances with a high impact on global geopolitics. These are Russia’s war against Ukraine, which began on February 24, 2022, and the conflict in Gaza between Israel and the terrorist group Hamas, which began on October 7, 2024. Therefore, the question arises throughout this essay: Is the globalization of the so-called Western world in terminal crisis, or are the mechanisms of negotiation between the superpowers and the way of configuring new power blocs between them simply being reformulated? Will the United States be able to rebuild its economy and China be prepared to increase its global influence?