The Economics of Supply Chain Politics : Dual Circulation, Derisking and the Sullivan Doctrine

Today, globalization is under attack with calls for reshoring, nearshoring and friendshoring (aka allyshoring) as well as related calls for decoupling and derisking. The paper distinguishes the various "shorings" conceptually, clarifies their underlying economics in relation to the criteria of robustness, flexibility, and resilience, and discusses the underlying drivers behind them, including the pandemic-related disruptions to supply chains, the perceived negative impacts of globalization on advanced economies, and heightened political risk arising due to deteriorating international relations and geopolitical rivalry over new foundational technologies. The paper draws out the implications for supply chain organization of the new supply chain politics that has emerged as a result. It argues that the “made in the world” production system remains the optimal framework for most countries and that politically motivated supply chain restructuring implies potentially significant costs to the public purse, both in terms of subsidizing restructuring and offsetting ongoing efficiency costs. The paper concludes that the new supply chain politics represents a significant departure from the established rules-based system and warns that weaponization of supply chains to extract likely transient advantages in developing the new foundational technologies raises much larger risks in driving confrontation in the longer term