Globalized Trade Being Destroyed by Robotics and 3-D Printing

This will make trade more regionalized as production migrates back toward consumer countries.

Stratfor suggests that trade blocs such as NAFTA could become virtually self-sufficient over the next couple decades. Regionalization of trade has clear benefits for the United States as a highly-educated and high-wage nation and Mexico as a less-educated and lower-wage nation.

But poor nations in East and Central Africa, as well as parts of Southeast Asia, that thought globalization would allow their cheaper labor to eventually replace China as the world's next manufacturing bases, could face continued stagnation.