Global governance, once again, crashed into the great wall of national sovereignty at the G-20 summit in Seoul last week. The governance camp found fragments of globalist achievement in the official and rhetorical comments generated in the final communiquTs and closing remarks of the Seoul Summit leaders. Despite repeated references to strong collective commitments to international cooperation, sustainable development and macroeconomic coordination, the G-20 countries jointly agreed to go their own ways and avoid collective action as much as possible. China spends enormous amounts of money intervening in the market to keep the yuan undervalued, so what we have said is it is important for China to follow a market-based system, said US President Barack Obama. Obama said the US Federal Reserve decision to pump $600 billion into the US economy was not central to discussions among G-20 leaders, which he said focused on taking concrete steps on re-balancing the world economy and growth. However, Brazilian President Luiz Incio Lula DaSilva condemned the isolated actions practiced by the United States (the $600 billion plan) and China (protectionist policies). Brazils president-elect Dilma Rousseff added: The weak dollar policy is a serious matter of concern throughout the world. This is something that has always caused problems. The weak dollar policy transfers the burden of an adjustment in the American economy to other economies. Germany, South Africa, South Korea, Turkey and others agreed as well and criticized the Feds policy action. At the end of the conference though, everyone committed to avoiding protectionist policies. But when it comes to the domestic economy, all policy tools are implemented to find a way out of domestic problems. No surprise, sovereignty scores again. China reported a larger-than-forecast $27.1 billion trade surplus for October, the second largest this year. South Koreas trade surplus rose to a new monthly high of $6.9 billion in October. Germanys trade surplus reached another high in September, hitting $23.6 billion. Another agenda item, financial regulation reforms, can be considered one of the successes of the G-20 meeting; hence, a score for global governance with the help of the referee (the International Monetary Fund [IMF]), which played an important role together with the Financial Stability Board. The Basel III reform package was the key point of agreement for countries, and as expected they all agreed on tougher capital and liquidity standards for domestic and multinational financial institutions and managed to agree to a point on control mechanisms for hedge funds, derivatives and credit rating agencies. However, there was no consensus on too big to fail proposals to control the size of the multinational banks. To sum up, G-20 leaders failed to agree on exchange rate policies, growth policies and trade policies but agreed to have balanced growth, sustainable current account balances and market-driven exchange-rate policies. Debt issues of the emerging economies were not even an important discussion item for G-20 countries but an existential issue for sure for the euro area. The financial reform program can be considered as a success. But we also have to note that the heavy lobbying activity of multinational banks proved effective, and they got what they wanted. So we can announce the winner: Sovereignty wins 3 to 1 against global governance.