De-globalization and Decoupling: Game Changing Consequences?

ABSTRACT

In the years that followed, China experienced a massive expansion in international trade and foreign direct investment as well as strong economic development, with average growth in its gross domestic product (GDP) of more than 9% between 2001 and 2019 (World Bank, 2021). What are the most salient contextual forces driving the trend toward de-globalization and global decoupling (e.g., geopolitical conflicts, GVCs or global supply chains, reshoring and relocation of manufacturing hubs, software development, electronic payment, platformization, and ecosystems)? 2. Technically, this might involve building platforms similar to Airbnb or Amazon, which connect manufacturers within a sector to a customized global supply chain that can accommodate sourcing redundancies or exclude suppliers in certain countries (e.g., Kenney & Zysman, 2020). [...]Krugman (2018, 2019) has recognized that the impact of China's rapid development, following its membership in the WTO in 2001, was unforeseen by many economists (including himself) in the 1990s and that the emergence of China as the world's factory contributed to the loss of jobs in US manufacturing.