Better globalization.
For decades, efficiency has been the dominant business objective: copy competitors and sell it for less. Globalization has been a way to sell for less. The effect is a “copycat” culture all around the world, with little customer choice, repressing artisans and small businesses with unique ideas and de-emphasizing creativity in corporate America, which takes time, money, i.e. inefficient.
No one can predict the future of this volatile moment. But what if the Trump “trade war” changes globalization from being a means for business to profit from lowering the cost of copying, to a means for offering unique and better products at a fair price, giving customers freedom of choice.
In our immediate vision, one benefit of Trump’s trade war is being revealed - China will no longer be the exclusive source of the cheapest “copy”. The first countries to see the opportunity are Japan, Vietnam, and India. I suspect the Americas, Africa, the Middle East (Gaza?) will be next.
The demand for tech and money (two of America’s biggest exports) will increase to build new factories around the world with the advantages of modern technologies. These factories will be more efficient than older Chinese plants and less environmentally toxic.
As money is distributed more evenly around the globe, there will be fewer wars and more disposable income to pay more for things that aren’t copies, but unique. The most significant change to the status quo for America could be the potential to disrupt our “copycat” social and business culture with increased demand for more unique, better choices.
Artisans and small business will benefit from lower tariffs, making unique, better products more price competitive.
When the market for unique, original work is more vital, social media “copycat” culture will be disrupted. People will want to be different and think for themselves. American ingenuity and small businesses (the primary source of US economic growth) will benefit from increased “influencer buzz” around better solutions instead of cheaper ones. Better solutions may be more efficient in the long run! Better lasts longer, so they won’t need to be replaced by multiple cheap copies that end up in environmentally unfriendly dumps.
When culture changes, big business will respond - energizing more innovation around better instead of cheaper.
To accelerate this disruption, Trump’s trade negotiators could exempt artisans and small business from tariffs, altogether.
So far, globalization has been about making copies of American products cheaper. Better globalization is a marketplace where business from artisans to small business to large corporations from around the world find a market that wants the freedom to choose unique, better ideas, from anywhere.