Predicting the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on globalization

The COVID-19 pandemic has significantly influenced the global economy, international travel, global supply chains, and how people interact, and subsequently affect globalization in coming years. In order to understand the impact of COVID-19 on globalization and provide potential guidance to policymakers, the present study predicted the globalization level of the world average and 14 specific countries in scenarios with and without COVID-19 based on a new Composite Indicator method which contains 15 indicators. Our results revealed that the world average globalization level is expected to decrease from 2017 to 2025 under the scenario without COVID-19 by −5.99%, while the decrease of globalization under the COVID-19 scenario is predicted to reach −4.76% in 2025. This finding implies that the impact of COVID-19 on globalization will not be as severe as expected in 2025. Nevertheless, the downward trend of globalization without COVID-19 is due to the decline of the Environmental indicators, whereas the decline under the COVID-19 scenario is attributed to Economic aspects (almost −50%). The impact of COVID-19 on globalization varies across individual countries. Among the countries investigated, COVID-19 had a positive impact on the globalization of Japan, Australia, the United States, the Russian Federation, Brazil, India and Togo. In contrast, the globalization in the United Kingdom, Switzerland, Qatar, Egypt, China and Gabon are expected to decrease. The variation of impact induced by COVID-19 on those countries is attributed to the weighting of economic, environmental and political aspects of globalization is different across these countries. Our results can help governments take suitable measures to balance economic, environmental and political policies, which may better support their decision-making.