The decision by Dubai-owned DP World to shed its US port operations was not the only blow to globalisation last week. Rumours that the airline Qantas was going to shift maintenance jobs from Australia to China unleashed a similarly large dose of xenophobia and economic nationalism.
In both cases, rationality and facts were jettisoned as emotional rhetoric and scaremongering took centre stage. And in both cases, there are warning signs that xenophobia on the part of developed countries can derail greater global integration.
In the US, DP World had to abandon plans to run six ports because an unholy alliance of media outlets and politicians in the US Congress managed to turn public opinion overwhelmingly against the idea. The fact that some of America's ports operations should be in the hands of a company that hails from a moderate, pro-western Arab country - the United Arab Emirates - was a threat to national security, apparently.
It did not matter, as many national-security experts observed, that ownership of ports is irrelevant to customs and security checks of containers of goods coming into the United States. In the current environment, the fact that DP World is an Arab-owned company was enough to light the fuse of American xenophobia and fears.
The hostility that Qantas has experienced over the past couple of weeks in Australia - over the mooted plans to move maintenance jobs to China - was on a smaller scale. But it shows that, if the conditions are right, it is as easy to undermine globalisation in Australia as in the US.
As Chinese and Australian officials were winding up their latest round of free-trade talks in Canberra, 300 union delegates marched to Qantas' Melbourne headquarters to protest against the supposed move to China. The Australian Manufacturing Workers' Union (AMWU), which represents Qantas' maintenance crews, was just as shrill in demonising China as American politicians and the media were about the ports company.