How Geopolitical Forces Are Reshaping Global Supply Chain Strategies

In recent years, geopolitical events have exposed the fragility of global supply chains. The pandemic, the Russia/Ukraine war, and the Israel/Gaza conflict have starkly demonstrated the vulnerabilities of supply lines. Designed primarily to minimize costs by leveraging low-cost labor and materials, these networks are easily disrupted by geopolitical events.

To better understand the dynamics reshaping global trade, TradeBeyond’s newly published report, Retail Sourcing Report: Q3/Q4 2024 Insights & Indicators, offers strategic insights into how supply chains are adapting. For instance, the Middle East conflict has made the Red Sea shipping route unviable, forcing container ships to take the longer and more expensive route around South Africa’s Cape. Along with Asian port congestion limiting container capacity, container shipping costs are pushing up toward pandemic levels.

Meanwhile, the Russia/Ukraine conflict has resulted in a reconfiguring of trade, with Russia discounting its plentiful energy exports to bypass sanctions and the decline of its important European markets. China and Russia have emerged as a powerful trading alliance — and a major challenge to U.S. economic and political hegemony. For Europe, high energy prices have accelerated the push towards cleaner energy.

Most interesting to watch are the large emerging economies such as India, Mexico, Brazil, and the recently expanded BRICS alliance, a significant trading bloc, together accounting for over 37 percent of global GDP. To the consternation of the U.S.-Europe alliance, these countries are trying to stay neutral on political issues, but at the same time are growing their bilateral trade with the Russia-China alliance. India is now the second biggest buyer of Russian energy exports and China is now India’s largest trading partner.

The report also extensively unpacks the impact of de-globalization and de-dollarization, two growing trends. Both U.S. competitors and allies recognize the risk of depending on the dollar and are increasingly using alternative trade settlement currencies. For Russia and China, this means the Chinese yuan. While the dollar is still a long way from being dethroned as the world’s trading currency, the long-term trend is clear that alternate currencies, especially the yuan, will become more important.

Strategic Responses to Geopolitical Shifts

While nearshoring and onshoring are still growing in the U.S., Mexico is now one of the most important U.S. trading partners. Also noteworthy is that Chinese manufacturing is staying ahead of geopolitics, with a substantial number of Chinese factories setting up shop in India, Vietnam, and Mexico to bypass tariffs.

This geopolitical reality has forced global supply chain executives to find alternatives, which in some cases means backpedaling from globalization. The degree of shift depends on the industry and region, but the overall trend is a steady shift away from the cost-driven dispersed global networks that have evolved since the 1980s to supply networks rooted in political alliances, which favor risk mitigation over cost savings.

The high value and strategically important global semiconductor industry is a case in point. With new U.S. and European protective tariffs on Chinese semiconductor exports (among other high-tech exports such as lithium-ion batteries and electric vehicles), the semiconductor market has become a strategic operational pawn in global supply chains. The U.S. Chips and Science Act provides over $50 billion in funding and subsidies for development of the U.S. semiconductor industry. As part of a larger $280 billion in science and tech funding, this measure is aimed at protecting and nurturing U.S. innovation and avoiding the chip shortages and supply bottlenecks which crippled the automotive and other industries during the pandemic.

At the same time, China is heavily focused on expanding higher value production in areas such as electronics, chemicals, pharmaceuticals, and high-tech manufacturing. China has more than made up for declining exports of high-value products such as semiconductors and electric vehicles to the U.S. and Europe with the expansion of exports to Russia and emerging economies in Asia and Africa.

The supply of raw materials used in the production of high-value technology products, such as lithium, cobalt and rare earth materials, are now also a strategic asset, much of which are controlled by China. With China restricting the flow of these raw materials, global supply chains of semiconductors and other products are less viable.

This all means that complex global supply chains that evolved to produce ever-cheaper made-in-China products make less sense. It also means that the inflated prices we're still experiencing for consumables, despite softening inflation, may be here to stay. At least in the near term, more secure U.S. and European supply chains come at a higher cost.

All these issues are discussed in greater detail in Retail Sourcing Report: Q3/Q4 2024 Insights & Indicators. This report covers a range of issues relevant to retail supply chain professionals, with detailed insights into the trends and challenges facing retail supply chains. Along with analysis of variables such as currency, commodity, and shipping trends, the report provides a detailed look at evolving regional markets, with forecasts based on expert research. As global supply chains adapt to new geopolitical realities, these kinds of actionable insights are more important than ever for supply chain leaders.

Lilian Bories is chief marketing officer for TradeBeyond, retail’s leading provider of SaaS supply chain solutions.