Karl Marx was right and Thomas Friedman was wrong. That’s one of the "huge" — to use one of US president-elect Donald J Trump’s favourite words — consequences of Wednesday’s US electoral earthquake. The politics of class fused with an angry nationalism easily outpolled the promised rewards of globalisation, of which Friedman was an early apostle. In 1999, Friedman published the holy grail of the brave new world entitled The Lexus and the Olive Tree: Understanding Globalisation. He proclaimed that, ineluctably, national borders, nuclear missiles and trade union protectionism were historical relics. Silicon Valley in northern California, with its high-tech entrepreneurs and geeky engineers, were the hub and the foot soldiers, respectively, of the new technological frontier. This was the future, and the Rust Belt states straddling the upper northeast — Michigan, Pennsylvania and Ohio — were in decline. Trump swept through that rust belt with the fury of an avenger on Wednesday. "The Do...

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