TRADE war and Covid-19 pandemic have exposed the complexity of managing supply chain. In managing supply chain, it is all about finding the right parts from the right suppliers at the right price and mitigating supply constraint risk through second…
It doesn’t seem that long ago, but it was, (October of 2018) that I wrote an article called “What’s Going on at Wally World”, based on the Section 301 tariffs being imposed on Chinese imports, and how it was affecting…
The pandemic has shown that supply chains will need to be rethought, with more emphasis put on supplier diversification, domestic production, and stockpiling. The challenge will be to strike a balance ensuring that a targeted and limited industrial policy does…
As politically polarized as the United States is right now, virtually everyone agrees on one thing. With millions unemployed in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, the nation urgently needs to create good jobs. In response, Washington appears to be…
The COVID-19 pandemic has caused a seismic shift in the global economic landscape as manufacturers move toward more local production and distribution. As supply chains become shorter and more transparent, the combination of edge computing and Industrial IoT (IIoT) devices will help…
International health crises have the ability to send shockwaves through global value chains. This column examines how value chains have responded to two previous health shocks – SARS and MERS – in order to draw lessons for the current pandemic.…
The advantages China offers will not become available closer to home and the costs of reshoring are high and often prohibitive. Opportunities for global trade will be a key area for business growth after the pandemic. Technology is pivotal to…
As we prepare for 2021, do we dare reflect on 2020? Given COVID-19 and political drama, we prefer NOT! There will be books and movies to tell the 2020 story, so we’ll let Hollywood take care of that. Instead, let’s look…
There's no shortage of articles that will opine about how tumultuous 2020 was for the economy, jobs, and industry as the world grappled with the impact of COVID-19 on business and daily life. However, there's reason to be optimistic, especially…
Beginning in the 1990s and accelerating after the inclusion of China in the World Trade Organization in 2001, many companies globalized their sourcing and production and embraced lean manufacturing techniques to reduce costs. As supply chains moved abroad, global trade jumped from…
The COVID-19 pandemic was supposed to put the final nail in the coffin of globalization and prompt a retreat into a new era of protectionism. Instead, some are now calling the crisis the Great Accelerator. The drop in international commerce…
Geneva: The Covid-19 pandemic was supposed to put the final nail in the coffin of globalization and prompt a retreat into a new era of protectionism. Instead, some are now calling the crisis the Great Accelerator. The drop in international commerce…
Reshoring continues to be strong in 2020 despite the pandemic and because of it, said the Reshoring Initiative in its latest report. US reshoring is outpacing foreign-direct investment (FDI) this year for the first time since 2014, as COVID-caused uncertainty is…
At a recent Site Selectors Guild webinar, several of the nation's top site selectors shared their perspectives on the future of office projects and other topics in a post-COVID world. EDCUtah's business development team compiled the following summary to share…
Potential Governmental Role in Accelerating Reshoring Some U.S. firms are already reshoring without any government support. A large-scale reshoring, however, may require the government to subsidize part of the capital expenditure (“capex”) of relocating, as well as the higher cost…
For decades, labor cost differences have been a primary influence in the continuous shift of manufacturing production from the U.S. to China. In 1980, the cost of labor in the U.S. was more than 30 times of that in China.…
The U.S. lost 3.4 million manufacturing jobs between 2000 and 2007, and a further 1.5 million between 2007 and 2016 — much of them to offshoring. More recently, however, factors such as the Trump administration’s trade policies, increased risk and disruption…
Harold James has been writing about globalization, and its oft-expected demise, for the better part of 40 years. The economic historian at Princeton University has examined the effects of financial crises old and new, from the Great Depression of the…
This year has presented manufacturing businesses with a major challenge of pivoting and adapting to the Covid-19 pandemic. During the summer of 2020, Citrin Cooperman surveyed over 200 manufacturing and distribution companies throughout the U.S. to take a pulse of…
Reshoring is currently the ultimate trend. The Dutch brand Secrid, inventor of the Cardprotector, is an expert in that field. ‘We have had almost all the parts produced in the Netherlands right from the very start”, says co-founder René van Geer.…