Take out your smartphone for a second. (Or, if you’re reading this on a smartphone, take a look at it in your hand.) Of the 118 elements on the periodic table, your smartphone contains more than half, including silicon, gold, indium (for your touch screen), and many more. These elements come out of the Earth. But they don’t come from the same part of the Earth, nor the ground controlled by the same country. Your smartphone is the product of a supply and assembly chain connecting countries from Chile to China. 

Technology like smartphones is possible only because of global trade networks. And global trade is only possible because of trade agreements, organizations, and the willingness of countries to do business with each other.

Today, the world is as interconnected as ever. But that doesn’t mean trade is growing. In fact, we may have already entered an era unlike the globalized world of a decade earlier. 

In this learning journey, you’ll venture down the Silk Road and across centuries of global trade. Then you’ll stop to look at where we’re at today—and if things are really changing for the better.

Steps of the Journey

This learning journey will include two videos followed by a reading.

The first video describes the different levers and gears of world trade, introducing international organizations like the World Trade Organization (WTO) and agreements like the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA).

The second video complicates this picture, describing how each era of global trade met obstacles in the form of disease and political instability—from the Romans to the Mongols to the world in the years of COVID-19. 

The third section will be a reading, which brings things back to today. This reading will ask difficult questions about the U.S. role in global trade. Are we taking a step back from the WTO? Is world trade becoming more fragmented? And could America’s new rules weaken relations between countries?