Last week, US President Donald Trump issued executive orders to tighten the enforcement of US trade rules and, by implication, to be more vigilant about securing US trade rights enshrined within international trade law. Across the Atlantic just two days earlier, UK Prime Minister Theresa May formally kicked-off the process to begin the country's withdrawal from the EU, an action likely to undo (at least for the UK) decades of carefully layered European economic integration. The week before that in Germany at a meeting of the G-20 (a forum of 20 of the world's major economies), ministers issued a final communiqué that excluded remarks denouncing protectionism, the first time this has happened since the G-20 was set up. For proponents of freer global trade, the events of this past March have been reminiscent of the infamous betrayal of Caesar during the Ides of March two millennia ago: a stab in the back for well over half a century of so-called trade and investment-driven globalisation and by some of its strongest advocates. These events represent concrete actions, not mere political rhetoric. They are a re-thinking of sorts of alternative approaches to crafting and implementing national economic security policies. The international economy has not arrived at this point by coincidence, or for the first time in its modern history. In fact, the last time a global, sustained protectionist trend took ideological hold was in the late 1920s and early 1930s in parallel with leaders who viewed the world through a populist lens, and this led to economic depression, unemployment and dire poverty in several key industrial nations. It may even have contributed to creating the conditions that partly facilitated World War II. The good news (if there is any) this time round is that things are not the same as they were earlier in the last century. It is probably questionable if the brand of populist politics on recent display in some parts of Europe and the United States that has triggered this policy re-think can be elevated to the intellectual rank of an “ideology”. This is not to suggest that populist politics are functionally inferior, however, since the resonance and importance of this new populism has proven, at least at present, to be competitively superior to long-standing ideologies (certainly in the US and UK). Indeed, the original impetus for the new national economic security policies appears to have been driven less by policy elites and technical experts at think tanks and seminars and more by the economically displaced and the culturally disenfranchised engaging in chat rooms on social media. Understanding the dynamics of cultural disenfranchisement and how it can breed cultural nationalism as well as economic nationalism is crucial, as these directly impact how national security policies are formulated in some major states, thereby impacting Egypt's own national economic security. In a world in which at least a few major economies are tilting in this direction, or the body politic at least is trying to, smaller economies looking to foster and maintain growth will require adaptive international economic policy strategies different from those that may have worked in the pre-populist world order, especially when faced with economic nationalism. More importantly, the challenges different countries and sectors face will not be the same since cultural nationalism and economic nationalism in their worst forms can either maliciously take on a politically expedient xenophobic character aimed more at domestic audiences, or create perceptions of malicious intent in which in reality none exist. For example, the recent US and UK airline cabin electronics bans aimed at travellers flying to either country from the Middle East and North Africa have been applied differently but supposedly based on the same intelligence information. The UK's ban is narrower in geographical scope than that of the US, excluding, for instance, flights from Abu Dhabi, Casablanca, Doha, Dubai and Kuwait City, but covering 14 different airlines (including UK carriers). The US ban covers flights emanating from 10 cities, but only affects nine airlines. Given that the airlines that fly to the US from hubs in Qatar and the UAE are embroiled in a long-standing dispute with the US over alleged government subsidies of their US-bound flights, and that the US Customs and Border Protection Agency operates a unique world-class pre-flight clearance system in the UAE for US-bound flights, it has not been surprising to hear senior government officials and company executives privately grumble about the ban when the UK, with presumably the same information, has not imposed such a ban on them. Either way, the ban impacts the national economic security of the countries of embarkation: their airlines will have to expect a potential medium-term decline in bookings for routes with such restrictions and that in turn will mean a corresponding loss of market share. One must accept the premise, however, that any risk to the safety of air passengers must be taken extremely seriously, and in that context the ban's necessity to save lives completely outweighs any individual or competitive inconveniences. Still, these dynamics make for a rapidly changing national economic security landscape that cannot continue to be approached using neo-classical paradigms or waning geopolitical assumptions. This is especially true for developing economies and emerging markets, including Egypt. For instance, the structure and quality of economic interdependence through integration in global supply chains is much more important than simply being a part of a global supply chain per se: in the long run, exporting fresh produce or semi-processed vegetable oils cannot possibly be equivalent in national economic security terms to manufacturing critically essential electronic sub-components used in mobile phones. Likewise, assuming that the geostrategic value of controlling the Suez Canal is a sufficient piece of leverage during international economic negotiations in a world where global brands can set up shop almost anywhere and repatriate profits (instead of making things in a home-country market and shipping them half way around the world through the Suez Canal) is quite simply archaic. The notion of national security in Egypt cannot continue to be seen as simply the purview of defence, interior and other state security institutions. There are several dimensions of national security (health, food, energy, etc), and national economic security policy is a crucial part of this package. As the world heads towards greater bilateralism and less multilateralism, as populist trends fuel further economic nationalism, as the region's largest trading bloc, the EU, reconfigures itself, Egyptian businesses and policy-makers ought to take a proactive stance today towards truly rethinking how to shape Egypt's national economic security of tomorrow. The writer is a specialist in international trade policy and has advised governments in the Middle East on national economic security.
