That's democracy in action!
But it now appears that globalization reaches its limits. These limits exist for two reasons. Firstly, there is the environmental limit. Globalization leads to very strong forms of specialization. There is of course nothing wrong with specialization as it provides the condition to create more material welfare. But specialization also means that goods are transported around the globe a lot. The lengthening of the value chains that has been made possible by the reductions of trade tariffs means that the same goods can travel back and forth between many countries before they achieve the final consumers. All this transporting around creates large environmental costs (e.g. CO2 emissions) that are not internalized in the price of the final product. As a result, the prices of these products are too low and too much is produced and consumed of them. Put differently, globalization has made markets freer but these markets do not function properly, giving incentives to produce goods that harm the environment.
Apart from bypassing the laws of individual countries in favor of corporate profits, and the lax environmental regulations that come with that, the fact that globalization means that cheaper and cheaper products are being shipped all over the world, the shipping itself is making the environmental impact far worse than ever before.
