The offshoring of activities and jobs has been an important element of the discourse on manufacturing in developed economies over the past decades. However, in recent years reshoring has attracted growing attention since manufacturing companies in OECD economies are increasingly reported to transfer activities back to their home country (back-shoring) or to a neighbouring country (near-shoring). The eroding cost advantage of emerging economies, the underestimation of the full cost of offshoring, the need for production to be close to markets and innovation, the protection of intellectual property and the need to balance cost savings and risk dispersion are all factors that have been proposed on why reshoring has become more important in recent years.

The debate on re-shoring is ongoing and considerable disagreement exists about how important this trend actually is. Some predict that reshoring will become a fundamental trend in the early 21st century, while more sceptical voices point to the small number of companies that are bringing activities and jobs home

Claims that reshoring will result in a large number of extra jobs at home are not largely supported in research; instead it is now increasingly being published in research journals that reshoring rather leads to additional capital investment in the home country but also in neighbouring countries. Because of these extra investments e.g. in robotics, the expectation is that reshored production will create only a limited number of additional jobs and that these jobs will increasingly be high-skilled.

From your understanding of how offshoring, re shoring and related concepts play out in the global supply chains, present your discussion post to support (or disagree) with the value of reshoring, especially in a post COVID19 scenario. Is it likely that reshoring will bring back jobs? Why or why not?

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