The future of global value chains business as usual or "a new normal"?

The OECD document regards global value chains (GVCs) and their evolution in the last decades. Authors put in evidence that GVCs seem to have lost momentum. Analyzing the future alternative scenarios for GVCs, authors reserve specific attention to the reshoring phenomenon. More specifically, they state that digitalization and automation of production processes may boost the relocation of manufacturing activities in the home country. At the same time, authors speculate that reshoring will not have a relevant impact in terms of job creation in the Western countries, since relocated production activities will be mainly conducted by automatic production systems. Finally, reshoring decisions might be driven by rising wages in developing countries. However, in a similar scenario, companies might prefer to implement further offshoring strategies (that is, moving production activities in countries with even lower labour costs) .