COVID-19 has had large impacts on global production and international trade. The column uses quarterly aggregate-level data on foreign affiliates of Japanese multinational corporations to show that multinational production and supply chains were negatively affected by the COVID-19 pandemic, especially in the 2nd quarter of 2020. The sales of Japanese manufacturing affiliates almost recovered in the 4th quarter of 2020, indicating the resilience of global production and multinationals’ supply chains. But there are large variations in recovery across countries.

The economic benefit from lifting lockdowns may depend significantly on the lockdown strategies of other regions and countries due to supply chain links. This column analyses the importance of supply chain links in this context by conducting a simulation analysis applying rich firm-level data from Japan to an agent-based model of production. It finds that the production of two regions can attain greater recovery by lifting their lockdowns together when they are closely linked through supply chains in either direction. These results point to the need for policy coordination among regions when regional governments impose or lift lockdowns.

In a world in which production processes are fragmented across countries, the effects of tariffs propagate along supply chains, with firms in downstream industries suffering from protection upstream.  This column studies the effects of US antidumping duties applied against China – its most frequent target – over 1988-2016 on US firms in downstream sectors. It finds that tariffs have large negative effects on downstream industries, increasing production costs and decreasing employment, wages, sales, and investment.

The rise of global supply chains means that many firms that import are also exporters. This column uses confidential firm-trade linked transaction data to identify the firms facing new US import tariffs in the period 2018-2019. It shows that product exports with higher firm-level exposure to new import tariffs had weaker export growth after 2018 than less exposed products. This impact on export growth is equivalent to an ad valorem tariff on US exports of 2-4% for the average product.

Global value chains will undergo a drastic transformation in the decade ahead. The change will be driven by a push for greater supply chain resilience due to COVID-19, which adds to existing pressures from the technology revolution, growing economic nationalism, and the sustainability imperative. Based on UNCTAD’s World Investment Report 2020, this column argues that the global trade and investment landscape will be reshaped by the restructuring of global chains, build-up of new regional chains, and distributed manufacturing. While these will present daunting challenges, they will also offer ample opportunities for firms and states alike and will lead to a GVC-development paradigm shift.

Some governments assert that global value chains create economic vulnerabilities in times of a pandemic. This column, taken from a recent Vox eBook, examines recent experiences and the risk-management literature. It concludes that it is a mistake to equate self-sufficiency with robustness – putting all the eggs in one basket is still not a good idea.  It is also a mistake to focus on production location when the imperative is to radically scale up production of vital medical supplies. Importantly, international supply chains will be needed to produce the billions of doses of COVID-19 vaccine we will soon need to manufacture and distribute. 

International trade has helped many nations get vital medical supplies during this pandemic, yet a number of new, protectionist initiatives have been taken or discussed which could disrupt global value chains. This column presents calculations showing that national manufacturing sectors all across the globe are highly interdependent, that these connections have risen since the 2008/9 crisis, and that China is pivotal in the network of dependencies. Given this, policies that seek to hinder supply-chain trade could prove costly. 

Cities and regions around the world are in lockdown in an attempt to contain the spread of Covid-19. This column examines how the economic effect of the lockdown of a city can propagate to other regions in the country, focusing on the case of Tokyo. The findings suggest that if Tokyo were to be locked down for two weeks, the loss in value added production in the city would be 4.3 trillion yen, while the production loss in the rest of Japan due to propagation through supply chains would be 5 trillion yen. In addition, the effect on other regions becomes progressively larger as the duration of the lockdown grows.

During World War II aircraft production in Japan increased sharply. This column, part of the Vox debate on the economics of WWII, examines the reasons for this ‘production miracle’, focusing on an aircraft manufacturing plant of Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Co., one of the two largest aircraft producers in Japan. The key to the production increase was the expansion of the supplier network. Mitsubishi Heavy Industries organized many suppliers to provide aircraft parts to its plants. However, in the final stage of the war, destruction of the supplier network by strategic bombing and an earthquake caused the collapse of the company’s aircraft production.