A sense that the world is coming unglued — and that great-power geopolitics will ultimately shape economic destiny — hangs over global markets and the economy.
The big picture: Aspects of how the world works that people have taken for granted for a generation have become deeply uncertain amid war in Europe, new pandemic lockdowns in China and high inflation in the U.S. that global developments stand to make worse.
The threats are to globalization itself, and specifically the assumption that even countries that have big disagreements can do business with each other on an ever-widening scale.
- At the same time, the faster and more efficient supply chains that companies have built over the course of decades are crumbling in new ways.
Driving the news: Over the weekend China announced a one-week lockdown of Shenzhen, an industrial powerhouse region that produces goods crucial to many global supply chains, due to a spike in COVID cases….