How does one deglobalise?

The clamour to take a step backwards from unbridled globalisation and open, free trade is being seen across the world. It si reflected in the stage of multilateral trade negotiations as well as the impasse at the WTO. So now the question is how does one "de-globalise" from a heightened stage of globalisation?

Geoffrey Gertz, writing in the Foreign Policy, explains the challenges of "de-globalisation" due to the intricate, well planned, and well established global supply chains. It is not a switch that can be turned on and off. It would require more planning and risks.

Many outside analysts are skeptical that such plans for deglobalization will succeed. They rightly note that contemporary global supply chains are extremely complex, the outcome of millions of individual uncoordinated firm decisions. Any attempts to unwind these processes will be cumbersome and costly. Although COVID-19 has prompted firms to revisit the trade-offs between efficiency and resiliency in their own supplier relationships, this does not mean that they’ll welcome government interference in such assessments. In fact, early reports suggest that firms around the world have been cool to their governments’ efforts to woo them away from China.

The skeptics are correct that rewiring supply chains will be difficult, and that firms are unlikely to simply fall in line with the wishes of politicians, particularly when doing so cuts against their bottom lines. Yet governments have more power to shift supply chains than may be obvious at first glance: Yes, it’s true that global supply chains reflect individual firm decisions. But these decisions are made within a policy environment set by governments. The current form of globalization is a policy choice; other worlds are still possible.

The move to "deglobalise" or to restrict vulnerabilities is a complex process of planning. It involves weighing alternatives as well assessing the possibilities of changing track:

What is clear, however, is that political exhortations alone won’t shift supply chains: Governments need concrete policy proposals, not vague directives, if they want to see real change. Moreover, restructuring supply chains should be done carefully and strategically, not through ad hoc, piecemeal policy announcements. In short, governments need to do their homework before acting. Rushing to dole out untargeted subsidies or implement new export controls will be both costly and ineffective: Governments will end up not only wasting money but also failing to address the vulnerabilities that worried them in the first place. Here are some practical steps to get started.

In the process of assessing these vulnerabilities is the assessment of the availability of strategic mineral capability for manufacturing. This study on mineral availability in the context of the US and how to assess it is interesting:

For the decade spanning 2007–2016, these results identify a subset of mineral commodities, including rare earth elements, platinum-group elements, cobalt, niobium, tantalum, and tungsten, that pose the greatest SR for the U.S. manufacturing sector. This subset includes commodities that have a high degree of production concentration in countries that may become unable or unwilling to supply to the United States, are mainly imported from other countries, and are consumed in economically important manufacturing industries that may be less able to withstand a price shock that may result from a supply disruption. It is this subset of commodities for which further investigations are necessary.

Each country needs to, and perhaps has made, make this assessment. Deglobalisation has its challenges - but needs to be met with a proper strategy.