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Standard Chartered CEO: One chart explains the Brexit vote and why Trump is now US President-elect

Ben Moshinsky   

Standard Chartered CEO: One chart explains the Brexit vote and why Trump is now US President-elect
Finance2 min read

The election of Donald Trump, and collapse of the centre ground in politics, is a crisis of globalisation brought about by inequality, Bill Winters, CEO of Standard Chartered said.

Populist uprisings, including the UK's vote to leave the European Union, spark "tons of open questions," Winters said. "But we shouldn't lose sight of the issues."

"The underlying process of populism is a check on globalisation, a pushback on how the benefits of globalisation is shared," said Winters.

"There's a fabulous chart that shows the division of profits between labour and capital going back 100 years," he said.

"To grossly simplify it, the share of global profits going to labour was 60% and and the share going to capital was 40% up until the day China joined the WTO [World Trade Organisation]," Winters said.

"At that point the lines converge and since then diverge with capital getting up to about 60% of the profits and labour 40%. That's a moment in history," Winters said. "It's not obviously all China and it's not all the WTO accession. But something's going to change," he added.

China joined the WTO on December 11 2001, integrating the country deeper into the global economy.

While we do not have the chart Winters refers to, here is a useful chart from the OECD showing how the labour share has declined:

Labour share

OECD

And another from the OECD:

Labour share 2

OECD

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