There's a feedback cycle at the heart of the global economy, and it's getting worse. That's the argument from Eswar Prasad, a Cornell economist and former International Monetary Fund official, who's warning that globalization and populism have entered what he calls a "doom loop."

Here's how it works: globalization creates economic winners and losers. The winners—coastal elites, tech workers, multinational corporations—do great. The losers—manufacturing towns, displaced workers, communities that lost industries to offshoring—get angry. That anger fuels populist politics. Populist politicians respond with protectionist policies—tariffs, trade restrictions, economic nationalism. Those policies disrupt global supply chains, which hurts the economy, which creates more losers, which fuels more populism. And the cycle repeats.

If that sounds familiar, it's because we're living through it right now. India just suspended trade talks with the U.S. after the Supreme Court ruled on tariffs. The U.S. and China are locked in a technology cold war. Europe is fragmenting over trade policy and immigration. And every time one country slaps on tariffs or restrictions, it gives political cover for others to do the same.

Prasad's point isn't that globalization is inherently bad—it's that the benefits were distributed unevenly, and the political backlash was inevitable. For decades, economists and policymakers sold globalization as a win-win. "Free trade lifts all boats," they said. And technically, they were right—global GDP grew, poverty fell, and consumers got cheaper goods. But within individual countries, the gains went to a narrow slice of people while entire regions got hollowed out.

So what's the fix? Prasad argues that you can't just reverse globalization—supply chains are too integrated, economies are too interconnected, and turning back the clock would cause massive disruption. But you also can't ignore the political reality that large swaths of voters feel left behind. The solution, he says, requires redistribution and retraining—policies that help displaced workers transition to new industries, investments in education and infrastructure, and tax systems that don't let multinational corporations dodge their obligations.