Just over 30 years ago, in 1990, the economic world was experiencing a fundamental regime change. The fall of the Berlin Wall in late 1989 marked the immediate start of a process that culminated in the collapse of the Soviet Union. This let the European Union and competitive markets expand eastwards.
The EU used 1992 as a deadline to create its internal market — in my view the most effective and beneficial thing it has yet done. Deng Xiaoping had already reoriented China towards markets and the vast fruits of that decision were starting to flow. The General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade had morphed into the World Trade Organisation, and Peter Sutherland, an Irish lawyer, was its first director-general. Mickey Kantor, a US trade
