“‘We see a real absence of international cooperation during this moment of global crisis,’ Meghan O’Sullivan, an international affairs professor at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government said May 20, pointing to early efforts by wealthy countries to procure vaccine manufacturing for the benefit of their own citizens. ‘But then we see more conventional manifestations of nationalism: Doubling down on calls to reshore manufacturing, growing talk about protectionist measures, a lot of talk in the United States about the use of tariffs … to punish China for its handling of the virus.’
“‘All of this together amounts to a move away from globalization and some of the prosperity associated with it,’ she said, adding that either a ‘top-down’ policy-driven or ‘bottom-up’ market-driven energy transition is difficult to envision in a world where nationalism and protectionism drive the global economy…”