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  • (Music)

  • For the past three decades,

  • Western multinationals have been outsourcing production to low-cost centers like China

  • creating global supply chains,

  • but business executives now appear to be moving away from the concept of globalization.

  • Today instead of celebrating "free trade".

  • US executives are calling for "fair trade."

  • This is a polite euphemism for better terms for US companies.

  • Business leaders are aligning themselves with President Donald Trump's "Make America great again" rhetoric.

  • We're gonna bring backMade in the USA.”

  • But there's evidence a shift was already underway.

  • In 2012, a survey showed that

  • 30% of executives said China was (the) most likely destination for US company investment

  • against 26 percent favoring local production.

  • But in 2015, only 20 percent of companies planned to boost production in China

  • as opposed to 31 percent that were looking to America.

  • One reason for this shift is a rise in relative wage cost in China.

  • Another is the production costs in the U.S. have fallen because of automation and cheap energy.

  • However, a third point is that chief executives have realized

  • that long supply chains create political and logistical risks.

  • Nobody should overstate the speed of this shift. It is subtle and slow.

  • For better or worse, we face a more localized world,

  • and that trend owes as much to robots and digital technologies as President Donald Trump.

  • We can turn it around.

(Music)

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