Many global enterprises today have succeeded by following a simple recipe: procure, manufacture, and assemble in the lowest-cost locations; link these using reliable, standardized logistics and information technology; market the resulting products globally; and book profit in low-tax havens. This powerful formula for economic arbitrage enabled by technology and supported by the politics of open borders is the fruit of several decades of globalization. Today, all three elements of the equation not only are changing, but also are subject to unprecedented levels of uncertainty.

The Standard Operating Model is Under Threat

Multidimensional uncertainty has profound implications for the standard operating model of global business.

First, the potential for economic arbitrage is decreasing as a result of narrowing labor cost differentials across nations and increasing capital intensity of production, leading to a discernible trend of reshoring production. Direct-cost differentials in manufacturing between the US and the Yangtze River Delta in China, for instance, are now estimated to be only 1%. When indirect costs such as logistics are considered, many goods destined for the US market can now be manufactured more cheaply in the US. Whether this trend will persist or strengthen, however, is impossible to say given other uncertainties.

Second, technology promises to reshape further the conventional wisdom of global organization. Advanced manufacturing technologies with flatter supply curves create the possibility of more customization, closer to the market. We already see this in Adidas’s restoration of shoe production to Germany. In the near future, blockchain technologies, sensors, and the industrial Internet of Things promise smarter, more interconnected supply chains, likely leading to more competition on responsiveness. Furthermore, an increasing proportion of traded value will consist of data and digital services, whose economics are very different from those of physical products. When and exactly how these technological shifts will reshape global supply chains is likely to remain unknowable for some time.

Third, as if all that were not enough, the political context has become considerably more complex. In spite of the tremendous aggregate economic impact of globalization, inequality of income and opportunity has increased within nations enough to stoke nationalist sentiment. That in turn shapes political outcomes in ways that directly and materially affect trading arrangements. As a result, the UK voted to exit the European Union, and the new US administration announced the country’s withdrawal from the Trans-Pacific Partnership and threatened to impose tax penalties on imports. While these pronouncements are known, the terms and details of Brexit, renegotiated US trade deals, and new taxation arrangements are all currently unknown, and the reactions of trading partners to these and the knock-on effects on exchange rates and economic growth are essentially unknowable.