Restart of Industry under the Influence of Covid-19: How Ready is the Global Supply Chain?

The outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic has major implications for the international division of labor. In particular, the supply of inputs from abroad is no longer guaranteed. The absence of workers due to illness or the closure of production facilities – first in China, followed by other Asian and European countries – leads to production losses. If there are no substitutes for these inputs in an importing country, the companies concerned are threatened with production losses or even a production standstill. In view of the coronavirus crisis, should companies rethink their business model of global supply chains and reduce their dependence on global production networks? How closely are the economies actually interwoven? Are “deglobalization” and a shifting of production back to Germany and Europe realistic and, above all, desirable?