PowerSwitch

Big macroeconomic changes happen slowly, sometimes they aren't clearly visible until years later.

We may currently be living through a structural change in the global economy as big as any since WWII without fully realising it.

The world economy may be becoming less integrated, with one of the important drivers of globalisation swinging into reverse.

There are reasons to think that the weakness of trade may reflect longer term factors than just the immediate aftermath of the credit crisis.

A report this week from Oxford Economics was optimistic that trade growth would pick up but identified structural reasons for its recent weakness - factors which may endure.

The first is the process of "reshoring" or bringing manufacturing that was previously outsourced abroad back to the home country.

Cheaper energy costs driven by the shale oil revolution have been one large driver of this in the US, but it appears to be a broader trend across the developed economies.