The Liberal World Order and the Job-Offshoring Backlash—In Structuralist Perspective

Abstract Many factors have contributed to the current wave of anti-globalization sentiments in the advanced world. This paper focuses on one of such factors, MNEs’ job-offshoring through their overseas networks of operation and its impact on the US working class. To this end, the “ladder of economic development a la Schumpeter” is presented as an analytical model from a structuralist point of view. Within this framework, the relations of innovation-driven structural change, transmigration of industries from more advanced to emerging economies at the hands of MNEs, and the globalization-afflicted working class and communities in the US are examined as closely intertwined, co-evolutionary phenomena. Four MNE-related sources of globalization angst and social costs are then discussed. The paper concludes with a much-needed analysis of the economic rationales for President Trump’s “if you sell here, produce here” jawboning on MNEs.