Deglobalization, reconfiguration, or business as usual? COVID-19 and the limits of reshoring of globalized production

The economic difficulties following the COVID-19 pandemic have seemingly reinforced the need for geographic restructuring and a reshoring of production, as they have demonstrated the vulnerability of globalized production. This article provides an assessment of the impact of COVID-19 on the geographies of production. Criticizing overly simplified perspectives on globalization, the article argues that global production networks are multiscalar and politically shaped phenomena. Based on these theoretical considerations and case studies on the automotive, electronics and clothing industries, the article concludes that the COVID-19 pandemic cannot be interpreted as a trigger for a general retreat from global manufacturing, but it reinforced longer-standing shifts toward more multipolar production and consumption structures. While the issue of global production network resilience has attracted greater attention in corporate strategies and industrial policies, the localization and regionalization of production networks is only one of several strategies, and it has hardly been implemented so far. Ongoing disruptions of supply chains, increased transport costs, and, above all, geopolitically and environmentally motivated policies could well lead to greater re- or nearshoring. Political efforts in this direction are, however, limited by pre-existing global economic development paths and the balance of power associated with them. In the conclusions, the article stresses the necessity of a politically motivated restructuring of global production networks in the context of an urgently needed social-ecological transformation.