Great overview of this issue. It's incredible to think the Western powers were ever willing to break up their supply chains, yet it was very much a product of the time. They believed they won, TINA was in place, and it seemed that global integrate markets were the norm for the future.
The return to international competition and imperial decay reminds me of the discussion of the international system Hymer made in his prescient 1972 paper "The internationalization of capital". In it, he predicts the global organizations of production that rose just a few decades later, but unlike the comparative advantage focus, he centers imperial relations of power. Also, the division between manufacturing and R&D/Design today mirror the division between so-called mental and manual labor but in the form of the state. There are states that "think" and those that merely "build".
Great overview of this issue. It's incredible to think the Western powers were ever willing to break up their supply chains, yet it was very much a product of the time. They believed they won, TINA was in place, and it seemed that global integrate markets were the norm for the future.
The return to international competition and imperial decay reminds me of the discussion of the international system Hymer made in his prescient 1972 paper "The internationalization of capital". In it, he predicts the global organizations of production that rose just a few decades later, but unlike the comparative advantage focus, he centers imperial relations of power. Also, the division between manufacturing and R&D/Design today mirror the division between so-called mental and manual labor but in the form of the state. There are states that "think" and those that merely "build".
Love the takeaway of the mirrored practice of vertical integration and offshoring. Thanks for explaining it so clearly!