GENEVA (Reuters) – The head of the World Trade Organization said on Monday that early signs of global trade fragmentation were appearing, criticising so-called ‘reshoring’ and ‘friendshoring’ between trade blocs.
“While we don’t yet see any large-scale fragmentation we are beginning to see signs,” said Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala at an event in Geneva, calling the trend “dangerous”.
“If we … reshore, friendshore we may be leading the world towards fragmentation of trade, which will be very costly,” she said. “So we’re saying let us not do this. Let us reimagine globalisation, and we’re calling it re-globalisation,” she said.
(Reporting by Emma Farge; Editing by Christoph Steitz)