Lhe multiple crises that have occurred since the Covid-19 pandemic have revealed the extremely strong interdependencies that link economies together, and particularly developed economies in emerging countries such as China and India. In most industrialized countries, a climate has established itself conducive to the return of policies promoting strategic autonomy and reindustrialization, with the help of large public subsidies in the United States even more than in Europe.
This resurgence of industrial policies is part of a context of reconfiguration of globalization since the beginning of the 2010s. This results in a regionalization of global value chains to the detriment of their expansion towards China and distant emerging countries, under the dual effect of the increase in unit labor costs in emerging countries and the increase in transport costs and transaction costs of world trade.
Firms in developed countries have in fact taken advantage of extremely low, or even negative, real interest rates until 2022, to accelerate the robotization of their assembly and production lines in order to reduce their unit costs. In addition, technological innovations, driven by artificial intelligence (AI) and the digital revolution, constitute a powerful potential lever for reconquering the competitive advantages of formerly industrialized countries. The race to attract talent in this field requires rethinking the provision of skills through the education system, and setting up interdisciplinary research programs that promote new modes of interaction.
Hyperglobalization and hypercarbonation
AI is transforming manufacturing processes, consumer behavior, work organization, supply chains, etc. Kiva robots have enabled Amazon to double its productivity. Baumol’s law, which explained the productivity gaps between services and the manufacturing industry to the benefit of the latter, seems partly to be called into question. At a time when the robotic industry is partially relocating to the North, we are witnessing the beginning of hyperglobalization of service jobs, both at the heart of the manufacturing industry and in the sector of relocatable services (research and development, IT, services legal, banking back office, etc.).
The hyperglobalization of the years 2000 to 2010 also went hand in hand with a hypercarbonization of world trade, industrialized economies having pushed the intensive use of fossil fuels very far. Ongoing investment in low-carbon technologies will also weigh on the redeployment of global value chains in favor of proximity to markets. The “decarbonization” of product composition mechanically shortens value chains by promoting production close to consumers.
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