Abstract

The COVID-19 emergency has highlighted the limits of current globalization, and in particular the dependence of vital products- whether drugs,medical equipment, or communications technology – on supply chains that are difficult to control. This crisis, however, is prompting a profound re-thinking of the rules that have governed the development of international markets until now. The article first examines the reasons for the three factors of change which, even before the pandemic, were already conditioning international economic exchanges: political, with the clearance of protectionist practices by the world’s leading economic power; technological, with digital technology radically redefining the spaces of relations within the production and consumption systems; environmental, with the growing social awareness of climate risks and the need to internalize costs in market exchanges. The pandemic has accentuated the importance of these three factors and the need to establish new global rules which, in order to function, cannot be designed only through political-institutional agreements.