Will rising oil prices lead to de-globalization?

In a post De-Globalization? Musing about Oil Prices and Trade Costs on Econbrowser, Menzie Chinn presents some time series on the development of oil prices and their strong correlation with transportation costs. From the recent rise of both he concludes that one has to expect a process of deglobalization, as

[...] more goods will now be “nontraded” [...]

which will lead to

[...] more “home bias” to US consumption (and more home bias to each other countries’ consumption, as well).

and cause that

[...] foreign and domestic goods would become less substitutable [...].

I would say: Unlikely. Why?

Some arguments are already given by the comments on the post:

1) With rising fuel prices one can expect substitution effect with respect to the means of transportation. The subsitution of more fuel efficient transport for less efficient transport will counteract the effect of rising oil price. This involves not only the substitution among existing technologies, but also fuel saving innovation.

2) The current weakness of the dollar can be expected to have a much larger impact on US consumption. It’s diminishing impact on imports will be much stronger than the rise in transport costs we can observe at the moment.

3) One comment says:

If ocean transport is a very small per cent of total cost, it could rise steeply without impacting global trade. [...] Indeed, if truck transport rises more steeply than ocean transport, because it is more energy intensive, the effect could be to disperse manufacturing within the USA, relative to American markets, rather than to diminish ocean transport.

The latter seems to be an especially strong argument (especially in a hypothetical environment in which the dollar remained strong). The share of transport costs in total costs of production can be safely assumed to be quite low, especially if ocean transport is involved. Hence, the impact of rising fuel prices (which in turn are a fraction of transport costs) is only small. Rising costs for short distance transport, i.e. within national borders, might add a much higher fraction to the final price of a good.

Furthermore, in the case of most products, oil (or energy) is used not only for transport but in the whole production process. This can give a cost advantage to products from regions which can produce with a lower energy intensity. For example, tomatoes for the European market are often produced in greenhouses in the Netherlands. As these tomatoes will become more expensive they will probably be replaced by tomatoes from warmer regions, e.g. from Northern Africa.

So, one maybe can expect some impact of rising oil prices on international trade. But one can seriously doubt whether this would be something as strong as de-globalization.