Read the following passage and answer the given questions.
After the Second World War, the leaders of the Western world tried to build institutions to prevent the conflicts of the preceding decades from recurring. They wanted to foster both prosperity and interdependence, to 'make war not only unthinkable but materially impossible'. Their work bore fruit. Expanded global trade has raised incomes around the world. While globalisation is sometimes portrayed as a corporate plot against the workers; that was not how it was seen before 1914. British trade unions were in favour of free trade, which kept down food prices for their members and also opened up markets for the factories in which they worked. Yet, as the Brexit vote demonstrates globalisation now seems to be receding. Most economists have been blindsided by the backslash. Free trade can be a hard sell politically. The political economy of trade is treacherous. Its benefits, though substantial, are dilute, but its costs are often concentrated. This gives those affected a strong incentive to push for protectionism. Globalisation itself thus seems to create forces that erode political support for integration.
Deeper economic integration required harmonisation of laws and regulations across countries. Differences in rules on employment contracts or product safety requirements, for instance, act as barriers to trade. Trade agreements like the TransPacific Partnership focus more on "nontariff barriers" than they do on tariff reduction. The net impact of this is likely to be that some individuals, consumers and businesses are not likely to be as benefitted as others and given rise to discontent. Thus the consequences of such trade agreements often run counter to popular preferences. Joseph Stiglitz, a Nobel Prize winner, has warned that companies influence over trade rules harms workers and erodes support for trade liberalisation. Clumsy government efforts to compensate workers hurt by globalisation contributed to the global financial crisis, by facilitating excessive household borrowing, among other things. Researchers have also documented how the cost of America's growing trade with China has fallen disproportionately on certain American cities. Such costs perpetuate a cycle of globalisation. Periods of global integration and technological progress generate rising inequality, which inevitably triggers two countervailing forces, one beneficial and one harmful. On the one hand, governments tend to respond to rising inequality by increasing redistribution and investing in education, on the other, inequality leads to political upheaval and war. The first great era of globalisation, which ended in 1914, gave way to a long period of declining inequality, in which harmful forces played a bigger rise than beneficial ones. History might repeat itself, he warns. Such warnings do not amount to
arguments against globalisation. As many economists are quick to note, the benefits of openness are massive. It is increasingly clear, however, that supporters of economic integration underestimated the risks both that big slices of society would feel left behind and that nationalism would continue to provide an alluring alternative. Either error alone might have undercut support for globalisation and the relative peace and prosperity it has brought in combination, they threaten to reverse it.