Hail the sacred neoliberal — the end is nigh

Chinese surpluses are not eternal. Just as neoliberalism is not immutable.

Even though nearly all economists, analysts, and journalists would cry out in outrage whenever a rare few like myself dared to question it. It was the absolute dogma, an irresistible force, a determinism that imposed a heavy, long-term continuity — against all odds. Jürgen Habermas hit the mark when he described this steamroller as a “contemporary theology,” one no one dared to name, as if it were a kind of sacred entity, untouchable and unspeakable. Mention it in a televised interview, and you were a pariah. Criticize it in an article, and you were dismissed as a fantasist.

And yet, our system of freedoms has gradually been trampled by monopolies of all kinds and scales, which have driven up the costs of healthcare, medicine, food, agricultural goods — a whole range of products and raw materials. Tens of millions of independent workers were pushed into bankruptcy; hundreds of villages and small towns were drained dry.

By 2025, who still denies that the collateral effects of globalization resulted in social fragmentation and a peak in inequality? Wasn’t it supposed to almost automatically produce well-being, boost productivity through liberalized trade? That, precisely, was why all barriers were torn down: because goods and capital were to flow freely, without oversight or regulation. As for the losers — if there were to be any — they would supposedly be compensated later by a rise in their standard of living.

The rise of protectionist sentiment clearly stems from the economic stagnation affecting nearly all Western countries, which have had to adopt the steamroller of fiscal austerity. So let us not be surprised by the harsh rejection of globalization and everything it represents among the majority of citizens in these so-called “integrated” economies — when it is widely known that they function as machines for exclusion and precarity. For our aging democracies, globalization has consistently become synonymous with hyper-concentration of wealth and the erosion of political power, reduced to little more than a puppet show.

Nothing can be done to counter this confiscation of our economic — and even public — sovereignty without a return to some form of ideology, which neoliberalism has systematically censored over the last forty years by convincing us that only mercantilism and profit mattered.

It is therefore imperative to mitigate the effects of globalization because — whether we like it or not — it is here to stay, and we cannot simply clam up like an oyster.

How? By adopting a broad set of measures, regulations, and laws aimed at protecting our middle class. Let us take some inspiration from that much-maligned China, for whom “globalization is like a mosquito net: it lets in the fresh air but keeps the mosquitoes out”…

Unlike the American president, for whom “tariff” is the most beautiful word in the dictionary, let us act with discernment: choose the sectors we want to promote and see thrive, fine-tune our policies and our messaging. Like the great exporting countries. Like Germany. Like Japan. Like China.