Publication Year: 2021

Building Resilient Global Supply Chains: The Geopolitics of the Indo-Pacific Region

Abstract: Global supply chains have evolved in recent decades with the aim of maximizing efficiency. However, rising labor costs in China and protectionist trends globally, especially in the United States, have forced a shift in approaches to international commerce, and the Covid-19 pandemic and acceleration of strategic rivalry between the United States and China have made the restructuring of supply chains an urgent task. Global companies are now searching for responses to supply chain challenges such as “reshoring,” “near-shoring,” and “China+1,” while the United States and China devise strategies to protect their own industries and improve their international competitiveness. The risk for companies being drawn into U.S.-China strategic competition, including the potential violation of U.S. sanctions, will also increase. For the global business community, a careful strategy to rebuild a resilient supply chain is indispensable, and nowhere is that more important than in the Indo-Pacific, the center of dynamism in the global economy.