Rethinking global value chains amid geo-economic fragmentation

The uneven recovery from the 2008 global financial crisis led to a stabilisation of international trade and capital flows. However, in the following years the surge of protectionist measures and deepening rivalries between big powers precipitated a crisis of the rule-based multilateral order. The pandemic crisis and the impact of the Russian invasion of Ukraine have boosted international economic fragmentation along geopolitical lines and may drive the global economy towards a reversal of the globalisation process that marked the second half of the 20th century. Mounting cross-border restrictions on the exchange of essential goods and services during the recent poly-crisis has caused big disruptions in global production networks evamping the debate on the future of global economic interdependence, and the potentialities and downsides of reshoring, nearshoring or friendshoring processes. Indeed, the reconfiguration of global value chains (GVCs) has been increasingly debated as an economic policy tool to secure the supply of critical products and establish economic security at the national level. Such defensive posturing raises concerns over how to manage emerging trade-offs between the benefits of openness (economic integration) and those of autonomy (economic security). The Istituto Affari Internazionali (IAI), in the framework of its partnership with Intesa Sanpaolo, launched a task force of experts to contribute to the current discussion on the implications and possible future configurations of international production networks at a time of a resurgence of national economic security. The overall research effort has involved different regional perspectives and multidisciplinary approaches to shed light on the implications of the policy-driven process of international economic fragmentation in the fields of trade, technology, labour, international finance, global public goods and other dimensions of international economic relations.