Peter Goodman, the New York Times Global Economics Correspondent, has written an interesting book on the covid pandemic examining its effects upon the global supply chain. However, the book takes a wider view than just that and describes how the global supply chain has ended up so fragile. Goodman also argues that policy decisions since the 1990s were in pursuit of building a globalisation whose winners were to be institutional investors taking their corporate logic to an extreme rather than workers. 

The author does a good job in taking the reader through the entire supply chain from the perspectives of everyone who engages with it. Crucially, the book was easy to read and enjoyable and I would recommend it to anyone interested in having a bit more of an ‘on-the-ground’ experience of trade and its functioning.

Fundamentally, the author has adopted a very American perspective regarding this topic looking at exporters, importers, policy makers, and regulators (to name a few of the perspectives) trying to deal with the disruption caused by the pandemic to the movement of goods in and out of the United States. Despite this, the issues - which range broadly given the nature and impact of the supply chain - that the author highlights remain true for any country that engages in international trade, and particularly for countries that had large manufacturing bases that have been moved overseas (such as the UK, Canada, France, etc).

Goodman paints the well-worn picture of how globalisation, particularly as an embodiment of shareholder capitalism, has run unabated since the fall of the Soviet Union in 1989 and the rise of China as a manufacturing hub for the world particularly after its introduction into the WTO. He describes how these two events led to ever cheaper goods, a wider selection of goods and with ever shrinking delivery times.

While international trade prior to the pandemic was beginning to become a political battleground particularly in the wake of Trump’s 2016 election, and Brexit, it was only because of the extreme disruption caused by the pandemic that the fragility of the supply chain took on a more prominent role in the minds of journalists, politicians, investors, and the wider public.

Goodman does not appear to be anti-trade but would like to see globalisation working for the benefit of workers and consumers, rather than ‘Wall Street”. Goodman highlights how the type of globalisation that has developed in pursuit of Wall Street’s goals actually is fragile and can therefore very quickly feel like deglobalisation given a large enough shock like the covid pandemic. The pandemic showed how the extreme centralisation of manufacturing and its associated cheap labour could be disrupted and make consumers feel the consequences of that centralisation.

The author seems to be spinning a similar story to Matthew Klein and Michael Pettis: that globalised trade has become a class war of sorts and politicians have been too quick to ignore the worsening situations of workers across their countries in order to placate capital chasing ever more efficient business lines. Goodman uses Henry Ford as a key example of a business that recognises that its employees are its customers and if they are not paid fairly, they won’t be able to pay for their products ultimately threatening the business.

In summary, Goodman has written an engaging book that provides some interesting personal stories across the supply chain. It also provides a timely reminder of how quickly the supply chain can get out of kilter and the manifold impacts of that, particularly as protectionism increasingly seems to constitute an active policy choice for many politicians across the world. However, he does not provide a clear view of whether nearshoring, reshoring or whether just building in some domestic spare capacity is the solution to ultra-globalised supply chains.