It’s coming home: The case for returning supply chain and manufacturing to our shores
In the the western world, the late twentieth / early twenty-first century consumer society – now taken as the norm and central to the economy’s well being – principally owes its success to one commodity – cheap human labour sourced in the far east. This significant cost saving benefit has resulted in astronomical profits for business owners and shareholders, but at a cost to both society – systemic unemployment in the west – and the less discussed (but arguably more significant) protection of national security, through the erosion of self sufficiency and manufacturing independence, and the subsequent dependency on alternative sources that are potentially – arguably already – our enemy.
This latter point has come into sharp relief following the outbreak of novel coronavirus (reclassified as Covid-19) in the undisputed workshop of the world, China, and the resulting disruption to both manufacturing and supply chain. This latest ‘Public Health Emergency of International Concern’ is the Butterfly Effect personified, with numerous manufacturing facilities across the world forced to shut down for want of natural resources and manmade components that typically originate from both China and the greater Asian region. The flutter of wings in Wuhan is being felt throughout the business world, and beyond.
The outbreak of Covid-19 is not the first significant global health scare, and certainly won’t be the last. In all likelihood, health-related global disruption is only likely to increase. Long established cultural norms in the east, such as open air, non-sterilised ‘wet markets’ – where both live and dead animals are sold side by side for consumption in poorly regulated conditions – are unlikely to disappear anytime soon.
The origin of the current coronavirus outbreak has been attributed to just such a wet market. If you’re travelling through or travelling from Asia, it’s not unreasonable to suggest that there is a high probability that the passenger sitting next to you has visited a wet market, and as a result there is an increased chance of exposure to its inherent dangers. This, in conjunction with the abundance of cheap air travel and ease of access to every major city in the world, makes the possibility of a global health-related incident occurring on a regular basis extremely plausible.
As such, given that we both anticipate and expect this circumstance to in all likelihood arise again, and since we can appreciate such an event’s impact on both the global economy and our own national security, surely the time is right to consider re-establishing our own local manufacturing base and supply chain, even at the cost of a more expensive labour force?
