International trade and investment have been buffeted over the past three years by US-China trade war tariffs, high-technology export controls, and other economic sanctions targeting Chinese policies. The COVID-19 pandemic has further disrupted production and created bottlenecks transporting goods within and between countries. International businesses have had to recalibrate their supply chains to make them more resilient to these and other shocks. Firms needing to diversify from China are now considering whether to reorganize production across Asia to complement continuing Chinese operations or to shift investment out of Asia to shorten supply chains serving the US market. The most promising candidate for large-scale nearshoring is Mexico, but so far at least, Mexico has not lured substantial new investments that could supplant Asian production serving the US market. In a collaborative effort to explore the feasibility and benefits of relocating production to Mexico, the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) and the Peterson Institute for International Economics (PIIE) organized a group of leading scholars and former officials to offer their individual perspectives in this collection of short essays. The Peterson Institute for International Economics and the Center for Strategic and International Studies are grateful to Chubb Ltd. for its support of this project.

Globalization, technology and an increasingly competitive business environment have encouraged huge changes in what is known as supply chain management, the art of sourcing components and delivering finished goods to the customer as cost effectively and efficiently as possible. Dell transformed the way people bought and were able to customize computers. Wal-Mart and Tesco have used their huge buying power and logistical skills to ensure the supply and stock management of their stores is finely honed. Manufacturers now make sure that components are where they are needed on the production line just in time for when they are needed and no longer. Such finessing of the way the supply chain works boosts the corporate bottom line and can make the difference between being a market leader or an also ran. This guide explores all the different aspects of supply chain management and gives hundreds of real life examples of what firms have achieved in the field.

Resilient supply chains are crucial to maintaining the consistent delivery of goods and services to the American people. The modern economy has made supply chains more interconnected than ever, while also expanding both their range and fragility. In the third quarter of 2017, Hurricanes Harvey, Irma and Maria revealed some significant vulnerabilities in the national and regional supply chains of Texas, Florida, the U.S. Virgin Islands, and Puerto Rico. The broad impacts and quick succession of these three hurricanes also shed light on the effectiveness of the nation's disaster logistics efforts during response through recovery. Drawing on lessons learned during the 2017 hurricanes, this report explores future strategies to improve supply chain management in disaster situations. This report makes recommendations to strengthen the roles of continuity planning, partnerships between civic leaders with small businesses, and infrastructure investment to ensure that essential supply chains will remain operational in the next major disaster. Focusing on the supply chains food, fuel, water, pharmaceutical, and medical supplies, the recommendations of this report will assist the Federal Emergency Management Agency as well as state and local officials, private sector decision makers, civic leaders, and others who can help ensure that supply chains remain robust and resilient in the face of natural disasters.

An accessible overview of political, economic, and strategic dimensions of global supply chains in a changing global political economy.

China’s trade patterns are evolving. While it started in light manufacturing and the assembly of more sophisticated products as part of global supply chains, China is now moving up the value chain, “onshoring” the production of higher-value-added upstream products and moving into more sophisticated downstream products as well. At the same time, with its wages rising, it has started to exit some lower-end, more labor-intensive sectors. These changes are taking place in the broader context of China’s rebalancing—away from exports and toward domestic demand, and within the latter, away from investment and toward consumption—and as a consequence, demand for some commodity imports is slowing, while consumption imports are slowly rising. The evolution of Chinese trade, investment, and consumption patterns offers opportunities and challenges to low-wage, low-income countries, including China’s neighbors in the Mekong region. Cambodia, Lao P.D.R., Myanmar, and Vietnam (the CLMV) are all open economies that are highly integrated with China. Rebalancing in China may mean less of a role for commodity exports from the region, but at the same time, the CLMV’s low labor costs suggest that manufacturing assembly for export could take off as China becomes less competitive, and as China itself demands more consumption items. Labor costs, however, are only part of the story. The CLMV will need to strengthen their infrastructure, education, governance, and trade regimes, and also run sound macro policies in order to capitalize fully on the opportunities presented by China’s transformation. With such policy efforts, the CLMV could see their trade and integration with global supply chains grow dramatically in the coming years.

Today, constellations of firms ally against each other--and the firm that stands alone, may fail alone. Now there's a start-to-finish guide to the opportunities facing extended enterprises. This book show why extended enterprises demand radically new buyer-supplier relationships, why traditional business structures inhibit alliances, and how to develop the competencies a company needs.

The COVID-19 pandemic has fundamentally altered the global economic landscape, with the smallest and most vulnerable economies particularly hard hit. In the Northern Triangle countries of El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras, the crisis has cost lives and livelihoods. It has impacted both the demand and supply sides of the economy, posing difficult policy tradeoffs. Risks to macroeconomic stability are now growing. Each country will likely exit the crisis with an even greater need for reform. Escaping the Governance Trap: Economic Reform in the Northern Triangle provides a framework for understanding the challenges of those three Central American nations, proposing that the lack of governing capacity in each country is a crucial problem. This book argues that economic reforms can help the Northern Triangle countries escape their governance traps and identifies priority areas of economic reform. Sectors covered include fiscal policy, monetary and exchange rate policy, financial access and deterrence, and structural reforms. It also highlights the role that stakeholders like the United States can play to help in these reform efforts, and how those outcomes affect the United States and the global community. All told, Escaping the Governance Trap provides an accessible, direct account of the Northern Triangle’s economic challenges and how to fix them.

This book focuses on the need to develop sustainable supply chains - economically, environmentally and socially. This book is not about a wish list of impractical choices, but the reality of decisions faced by all those involved in supply chain management today. Our definition of sustainable supply chains is not restricted to so-called "green" supply chains, but recognises that in order to be truly sustainable, supply chains must operate within a realistic financial structure, as well as contribute value to our society. Supply chains are not sustainable unless they are realistically funded and valued. Thus, a real definition of sustainable supply chain management must take account of all relevant economic, social and environmental issues. This book contains examples from a wide range of real-life case studies, and synthesizes the learnings from these many different situations to provide the fundamental building blocks at the centre of successful logistics and supply chain management.

The border between the United States and Mexico is one of the most unique and complex regions of the world. The asymmetry of the border region, together with the profound cultural differences of the two countries, create national controversies around migration, security, and illegal flows of drugs and weapons. The national narratives miss the fact that the 15 million or more people living in the border regions of Mexico and the United States are highly interactive and responsive to conditions on the other side. Enormous legal cross-border flows of people, goods, and finance are embedded in the region’s history and prompted by the need to respond to new opportunities and challenges that originate on the other side. In Border Economies James Gerber examines how the interactivity and sensitivity of communities to conditions across the border differentiates them from communities in the interiors of Mexico and the United States. Gerber explains what makes the region not only unique but uniquely interesting. In Border Economies readers who want to understand the conditions that make the border controversial but also want to go beyond shallow political narratives will find an in-depth exploration of the economic forces shaping the region and an antidote to common prejudices and misunderstandings.