Deglobalization of Manufacturing Value Chains? A data-based approach.

In manufacturing value chains (MVC), an increasing globalization used to be the persistent direction for decades. Recent crises massively disturbed global MVCs and lead to the question, if a trend reversal, a "deglobalization", is about to happen. Some authors already see this trend reversal as a given, but did not provide any supporting data so far. This paper intends to shed light into the topic by reviewing underlying reasons, motives and key drivers for companies to operate in global MVCs, identifying corresponding indicators, and gathering data for these. The subsequent analysis of the data reveals a distinct slowdown of globalization growth rates, but no trend reversal, yet. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]