Grave New World: The End of Globalisation, the Return of History. By Stephen King. Yale University Press; 290 pages; $30 and £20.

GLOBALISATION is not new. In the late 19th century capital moved freely across the world and goods crossed national borders (despite tariffs) with the help of cheap transport. People, too, migrated across the oceans on a proportionately far bigger scale than they do today. All that came to a dramatic end with the outbreak of the first world war.

Trade did not recover its share of world GDP until the 1960s. But after the Berlin Wall fell in 1989, it became tempting to believe in a kind of “Whig theory of globalisation” with economies growing ever more linked thanks to the internet and the spread of liberal capitalism. Perhaps the world is due for another change of trend. That is the view of Stephen King, an economist at HSBC, which, as it happens, is one of the most global of banks.

In “Grave New World” Mr King argues that economic progress that reaches beyond borders is not “an inescapable truth”. Technology may have boosted globalisation until now, but it may not do so in future. Companies may decide to replace cheap labour in the developing world with robots at home, causing global supply chains to collapse. The internet has also increased inequality within economies, as skilled workers have reaped the most benefits, creating a division between the “haves” and the “have nots”.

A resurgence in migration has also caused a political backlash, on both economic and cultural grounds. Populist politicians have gained voters, and even power in some countries. And there may be even greater migrant flows to come, as Africa’s population grows and its citizens seek to escape from failed states, or the consequences of climate change, and to enhance their economic opportunities. The developed world may place more restrictions on inflows, as America did in the early 20th century, barring both Asians and those who could not pass a literacy test.

Geopolitical shifts will also make a difference. After 1945, America was globalisation’s leading architect and its main sponsor. But its authority is now being challenged on a number of fronts. China is asserting itself in the Pacific; Russia is doing so in eastern Europe and the Middle East. Western Europe no longer backs America on all issues and takes a sharply different view from Donald Trump on climate change. The election of Mr Trump proves that domestic voters have wearied of the country’s global responsibilities and want to put “America first”.

The result, says Mr King, is that “co-operative arrangements between nation states will be increasingly hard to come by. Conflict—at least in the economic sphere—will become ever more frequent.” The cancellation by Mr Trump of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (a trade agreement with Asia) and the failure to agree on the Doha round of global tariff reductions are cases in point. National governments are turning their backs on global institutions and focusing on their domestic interests.

So what is the answer? The irony is that likely solutions require international co-operation, the very thing that populism makes more difficult. Mr King looks at ideas such as breaking up the euro, a global organisation to reconcile capital flows between countries or even a borderless world and concludes they either will be insufficient or are unlikely to happen.

The author ends with a mock campaign speech from a Ms Trump in 2044, which looks back at the collapse of the EU and America’s withdrawal from NATO. For an optimistic economist, it is a surprisingly bleak way to end a well-written and thought-provoking book.