Globalization No Longer Works – A Wake Up Call for Business and Education Speech By Janice Ong

Hi, my name is Janice. Today, I want to talk about a reality we can no longer ignore:
Globalization no longer works—and Trump’s tariffs are a wake-up call.
What we’ve learned in schools, universities, and business programs is no longer enough.
The business and marketing education system we grew up with? It’s outdated.
We are living in a time of global disruption—where trade wars, broken supply chains, and shifting political landscapes are challenging everything we thought we knew.
And so today, I want to challenge all of us to rethink what we teach, what we practice, and what we prepare the next generation for.
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[The Globalization Illusion]
For decades, we were told that globalization was the key to prosperity.
In classrooms, textbooks, and economic forums, it was painted as an unstoppable force—one that creates jobs, raises living standards, and connects the world into a harmonious, interdependent system.
In business schools and MBA programs around the world, we learned the principles of:
• Global expansion,
• Supply chain optimization,
• Just-in-time inventory,
• And mass-market consumer targeting.
We studied case studies from the golden age of globalization: Coca-Cola, McDonald’s, Apple, Amazon.
We were told this was the future—seamless global trade, brand universality, and economies of scale.
But let’s pause for a moment.
If globalization works so well, why are we watching it unravel in real time?
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[The Educational Crisis]
The foundation of traditional business and marketing education is built on assumptions that are now crumbling before our eyes.
If we don’t rewrite the curriculum soon, we’ll keep preparing students for a world that simply doesn’t exist anymore.
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[The Tariff Wake-Up Call]
The latest wave of tariffs imposed by President Donald Trump—and echoed by leaders around the world—exposed the deep flaws in the model we were taught.
These tariffs are not just political noise. They are signals.
Alarm bells.
And they’re telling us one thing, loud and clear:
The globalization we were taught no longer works.
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[What We Were Taught]
We were taught that:
• Free trade leads to efficiency.
• Open borders create win-win outcomes.
• Goods should be produced where it’s cheapest.
• And national economies should specialize.
We were taught to chase:
• The cheapest manufacturing,
• The biggest markets,
• The longest reach.
Textbooks showed us seamless global supply chains—like webs too efficient to fail.
But that vision was built on assumptions—that the world would remain politically stable, that supply chains wouldn’t break, and that nations wouldn’t weaponize trade for power.
So what happens when they do?
When tariffs get slapped on overnight—not just by Trump, but by countries all over the world?
When efficiency fails, and resilience becomes the new advantage?
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[The Marketing Myth]
Marketing education, too, was stuck in a time capsule.
We were taught to:
• Segment by demographics,
• Build buyer personas,
• Push slick campaigns through mass media,
• And control the brand image from top to bottom.
But the world has changed.
Today:
• Consumers are faster, smarter, more skeptical.
• Platforms keep shifting.
• TikTok decides what sells.
• Algorithms rewrite brand strategy in real time.
• Culture moves faster than curriculum.
We used to teach marketing like it was chess.
Now, it’s more like jazz—improvised, reactive, emotional, and platform-dependent.
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[Tariffs, Politics & Power]
Trump’s tariffs exposed just how fragile our business assumptions really are.
They are not just trade policies. They are shocks to the system.
Businesses that spent decades optimizing for a borderless world suddenly had to relearn how to survive in a fractured one.
And yet, we’re still teaching students that:
• Business is neutral.
• Politics don’t matter.
• Markets are rational.
They’re not.
Business is geopolitical now.
Trade is weaponized.
Nations are prioritizing control over cooperation.
And our education system hasn’t caught up.
Trump’s tariffs—on steel, aluminum, Chinese imports, and more—shattered the illusion of globalization’s stability.
Their impact is crystal clear:
• Supply chains are vulnerable. One disruption can shake entire industries.
• National self-interest is back. Countries are bringing production back home.
• Trade is strategic. Technology, semiconductors, rare earth minerals—these aren’t just goods. They’re leverage.
What we’re seeing is a return to:
• Economic nationalism
• Protectionism
• Industrial policy
These are no longer relics of the past—they’re front and center.
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[So What Does This Mean?]
It means we need to challenge everything we’ve been taught.
It means schools, universities, and economists must stop teaching globalization as a static theory—and start teaching it as a dynamic battlefield.
A battlefield of:
• Politics
• Power
• Technology
• Climate
• Conflict
Is Globalization dead?
But the version we believed in—the 1990s, free-market, flat-world version—is broken.
And tariffs like Trump’s are not a glitch in the system.
They’re a symptom of a system that no longer serves everyone.
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[The New Business Education We Need]
We need a new kind of business and marketing education—one that teaches:
• Geopolitical awareness — not just how to enter markets, but how to navigate conflict.
• Sustainable supply chains — not just cheap labor, but ethical and local resilience.
• Cultural literacy — beyond global branding, into meaningful human connection.
• Resilience and redundancy — not just efficiency.
• Real-time adaptation — not just long-term planning.
The future business leader is not just a manager.
They’re a strategist, a communicator, a tech thinker, and a social observer.
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[A Call to Rethink]
The past business and marketing education system?
It no longer works.
Let’s stop pretending it does.
And let’s start building something that will.
It’s time to rewrite the textbooks.
Time to update the curriculum.
Time to teach students not just about comparative advantage, but about:
• Geopolitical risk
• Economic resilience
• Technological sovereignty
The global economy is now fragmented, politicized, and unpredictable.
If we keep teaching the old model, we’re preparing students for a world that no longer exists.
We owe it to the next generation—not to teach them what once worked, but to prepare them for what’s coming.
That means:
• Tearing up old case studies,
• Questioning outdated theories,
• And building new models—models defined not by globalization, but by uncertainty, speed, and complexity.
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[Closing]
The past education model is broken.
The world has changed.
So let’s teach for the world we live in—not the one we used to imagine.
Thank you.