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Faced with its dependency on Asian industries, Europe comes to terms with the fact that the production of a series of commodities – underlining textile and fashion goods – may return to European soil after the pandemic. Specialists are already talking about a deglobalization trend, and researcher Alicia Garcia-Herrero, from the Bruegel think tank, even says that relocating production into Europe may be very important for Portugal and Spain.
Alicia Garcia-Herrero, researcher of Bruegel – a European think tank on economics – says, in an interview to Exame magazine, that “two things will happen: the relocation of production to Europe, which may be important to Portugal and Spain, and [from China] to countries like Vietnam. Not everything will be relocated, but it will be more than we thought”.
To the researcher, “the new coronavirus forces a deglobalization different from a trade war. It’s not only a problem of value chains: we are heading towards a deglobalization of people’s movements”.
For the economist Ricardo Reis, professor at the London School of Economics, “many companies realized they must diversify” the location of their production. “They can’t have the entire production chain in the same province. This lesson will lead to a production reorganization within the next years”.
Bruno Le Maire, French Minister of Finance, stated that “we clearly see that our supply is overly dependent on foreign countries. We will review our industrial production chains to see how we can strategically relocate important businesses in order to become sovereign and independent”.