Globalization in Retreat – COVID-19

The world-wide economy recovering from the coronavirus pandemic is likely to be less globalized. Governments, including many longtime advocates of global trade, are using the crisis to erect barriers to commerce and bring manufacturing home, the WSJ’s Jacob M. Schlesinger writes, while companies are reassessing far-flung production networks that have proven vulnerable to disruption. A decade of disease, natural disasters and trade wars shows that companies have been “putting a huge amount of risk in global supply chains,” says supply-chain chief Peter Anderson of engine-maker Cummins Inc. Some manufacturers are looking to make goods closer to where they are sold and are focusing on resilience rather than simple cost-cutting efficiency. Foreign trade is forecast to fall by as much as a third this year, and international investors pulled $83 billion from emerging markets in March alone, suggesting they’re not expecting supply chains to return to those markets anytime soon.

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