The sanctions against Russia and the broken relations that the war in Ukraine has entailed may mark the end of the wave of globalization we have experienced in the last thirty years.

This is what Larry Fink, CEO of the world's largest fund manager BlackRock, writes in a letter to his shareholders.

Met Fink is not the first to declare globalization dead: The magazine The Economist has been using the term "slowbalization" since 2019 to describe the future of global trade.

In September of the same year, the then President of the United States Donald Trump declared before the UN General Assembly "The future does not belong to globalists".

A few months later, Brexit became a reality.

Shortly afterwards, the pandemic shut down the world and world trade collapsed.

Now that war has broken out in Europe, companies and countries will review their dependence on other countries, according to Larry Fink, who warns that the war will reshape the economy and drive up inflation as companies withdraw from their global supply chains.

Import problems are increasing drastically

Swedish companies have noticed import disruptions throughout the pandemic.

But since the war broke out, the problems have increased dramatically, according to the Confederation of Swedish Enterprise's Anna Stellinger.

These include shortages of goods, delivery delays and rising prices.

- The effects of the war are quite acute right now.

It affects many sections very broadly.

Even if the war were to end today, the effects will be felt for a long time to come, she says at Ekonomibyrån.

To alleviate future import difficulties, more than half of the companies increase their inventory, according to a survey from the Confederation of Swedish Enterprise.

Twelve percent of companies move production or purchasing to Europe, and every tenth company moves production or purchasing to Sweden.

Many also choose to use more players and suppliers in more places in the world.

The difficulties that companies are experiencing may mean that globalization is losing momentum, but that it would be dead, SEB's senior economist Robert Bergqvist does not agree with: 

- The rumor of the death of globalization is greatly exaggerated.

I rather see a normalization of the very strong globalization we have seen in the last 20 years, he says in Ekonomibyrån.

Do not miss the whole episode of Ekonomibyrån: The threat to world trade, on SVT Play.