New Cold War? What New Cold War? Confronting the Geoeconomic Fragmentation Narrative with the Data

Une nouvelle guerre froide ? Quelle nouvelle guerre froide ? Le discours sur la fragmentation géoéconomique à l'épreuve des données

Sebastien Jean

Post-Print from HAL

Abstract: It has become widely accepted that the world economy should be seen as increasingly shaped by forces of fragmentation, resulting from geopolitical tensions. This article takes another look at this narrative, using international trade data. While an aggregate analysis is consistent with a new Cold War narrative, whereby international trade is increasingly seen as split into two blocs, this is only a mix of very different outcomes. Far from being a widespread trend, geoeconomic fragmentation of trade flows is only significant in "hotspots": Russia's foreign trade and China-US bilateral exchanges, and the impact is massive in these cases. Outside these "hotspots", there is no tangible sign that geopolitical tensions have been shaping international trade patterns in terms of blocs, nor is there any hint of a trend toward nearshoring – to the contrary, in fact.

Keywords: Globalisation; Commerce international; Mondialisation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025-12
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Published in Revue d'économie financière, 2025, n° 160, pp.25-39. ⟨10.3917/e.ecofi.160.0025⟩

There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hal:journl:hal-05706896

DOI: 10.3917/e.ecofi.160.0025

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Post-Print from HAL
Bibliographic data for series maintained by CCSD ().