## The New Wave of Nationalization

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**Canonical URL:** [The New Wave of Nationalization](https://www.imf.org/en/publications/fandd/issues/2026/06/the-new-wave-of-nationalization-nicholas-mulder)

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## Bibliographic details
- Authors: Nicholas Mulder
- Published: June 2, 2026

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### Overview
- Governments are taking over private enterprises and resources at the fastest pace in 50 years.
- Since 2020, governments on every continent have nationalized properties held by their own citizens and by foreign investors.
- The current wave is the fourth great wave of nationalizations in the past 100 years and reflects interactions among political urgency, monetary conditions, and capital mobility.

### Key statistics and factual findings
- Russia has seized more than $48 billion in ports, factories, and consumer businesses since it invaded Ukraine in 2022.
- The United States took a dominant ownership stake in the country’s only domestic rare earth producer.
- Although the valuations are disputed, $239 billion–$544 billion in assets was nationalized between 2016 and 2026 alone.
- Between 1931 and 1935 the United States nationalized about a third of financial capital.
- In Germany more than half of bank capital became state owned (1930s).
- Italy nationalized 20 percent of private industrial and financial assets from 1931 to 1933.
- UN membership grew from 51 nations in 1945 to 127 by 1970.
- Research by Stephen Kobrin shows the pace of property takeovers accelerated and peaked in 1975, when 28 countries carried out 83 expropriations—one every four days, on average.
- Between 1971 and 1980, developing economies nationalized at least $26 billion in foreign-owned property, or 11 percent of total foreign direct investment in the developing world in 1980.

### Drivers of the 2020s wave
- Geopolitical instability.
- Commodity market disruptions.
- Renewable energy development and the strategic desire to control minerals for renewable technologies.
- National security considerations and strategic competition.
- Broader acceptance of interventionist economic policies and the political conviction that nationalizations are a vital instrument of economic policy in an era of geoeconomic fragmentation.
- “Demonstration effect”: successful nationalizations signal ease and desirability of similar policies to other governments.
- Inflationary environments lower the real cost of compensated buyouts, facilitating nationalizations.
- The rise in nationalizations despite high capital market integration indicates strong macroeconomic and geopolitical forces favoring takeovers.

### Historical context — three prior waves
- First wave: 1930s
  - Triggered by the Great Depression and the collapse of free trade and capital flows.
  - Large-scale interventions to fend off financial system collapse; examples include banking nationalizations and takeover of strategic industries.
  - Advanced economies’ nationalizations reduced global trade and investment and contributed to market segmentation.
  - Outcome: prevented bankruptcies in the short run, increased policymaking autonomy, and helped shape the postwar international economic order.
- Second wave: Late 1940s
  - Followed World War II amid the Bretton Woods fixed-exchange-rate regime and rising public investment.
  - Nationalizations were broader in sectoral focus, more systematic, and implemented more gradually than in the 1930s.
  - Examples: UK nationalized the Bank of England and multiple utilities and industries; France took over the Banque de France, private institutions holding 80 percent of bank deposits, and several major industries.
  - Resulted in rapid postwar growth, with state-owned enterprises mobilizing large sums for investment.
- Third wave: 1970s
  - Fueled by decolonization, the end of the Bretton Woods system (Nixon’s devaluation in August 1971), and the 1973 oil crisis.
  - Commodities and natural-resource nationalizations expanded; the 1970s wave was broader, longer, and involved more valuable resources than prior waves.
  - Inflation made compensation cheaper in real terms, encouraging takeovers.
  - International effect: created an overhang of sovereign debt for many developing economies, contributing to the debt crises of the early 1980s.
  - The wave was curtailed by contractionary monetary policies adopted by the Federal Reserve starting in 1979, which brought down inflation and slowed global growth.

### Forms and legal instruments
- Nationalizations vary in form:
  - Outright confiscations.
  - Compensated expropriations.
  - State-facilitated transfers of assets from one private owner to another in forced sales.
- All approaches use political and legal instruments to bring private property under national control and renegotiate the relationship between the state and capital.
- Not all nationalizations assert permanent state ownership; some are temporary, crisis-driven, or ultimately reversed.

### Economic and geopolitical implications
- Geopolitical nationalizations increase the riskiness of foreign direct investment between strategic adversaries.
- These takeovers will change but not necessarily slow global economic and financial integration.
- Possible realignment of flows:
  - More trade, lending, and investment may occur within geopolitically aligned blocs.
  - Neutral states can attract foreign capital by positioning themselves as reliable intermediaries and safe destinations for investment.
- The current wave may rearrange long-term patterns of international trade and investment rather than reverse globalization.

### Patterns, timing, and constraints
- Nationalizations cluster in waves because they respond to broad external and internal factors (commodity prices, inflation, demonstration effects).
- Greater capital mobility historically restrains nationalizations by providing investors exit options and accelerating market reactions.
- The rise in nationalizations today despite historically high capital market integration points to unusually strong macroeconomic and geopolitical drivers.

_International Monetary Fund — The New Wave of Nationalization, NICHOLAS MULDER, June 2026._

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_Source: https://www.imf.org/en/publications/fandd/issues/2026/06/the-new-wave-of-nationalization-nicholas-mulder_