Daily Times

Some companies are ahead of the game the Spanish clothing retailer Zara is one of the most successful in the clothing industry, and its shorter supply chains have helped the company weather the Covid19 storm.While most western high street fashion brands have offshored manufacturing to Asia where labour is cheaper distance equals time.So, retailers have to bulk order six months in advance, and in that time, a lot can go out of fashion.Zara keeps its manufacturing base closer to home for its higher fashion lines meaning you can take a design to the high street in a matter of weeks that way it doesn’t stockpile inventory and can respond quickly to consumer trends.This model is coming not to fashion, but industry after industry is going to move in that direction in part because the on-demand economy is allowing us to express our tastes through social commerce.

We’ve seen a revolution that’s driven both by fear of disruption on the one hand but also by the opportunities created by the internet economy.The pandemic has disrupted the movement of goods, people and capital around the globe.But even without Covid19, another pillar of globalization would be facing challenges.The flow of data across borders the great firewall of China has kept out the likes of Google and Facebook for years, and President Trump’s recent attacks on Tiktok and Wechat are deepening this splinter net between China and the west. President Trump said, “we’re looking at Tiktok we may be manning, and it’s not just software we confronted untrustworthy Chinese technology and telecom providers we convinced many countries, and I did this myself for the most part not to use Huawei”.The decoupling of Chinese and American technology also extends to hardware I believe this is likely to lead to two worlds a China-dominated world and an America-dominated world on technology and software.Ultimately, we will have less innovation.

Economic nationalism will not prove to be a silver bullet it’s very likely that policies of deglobalization or economic nationalism that try to bring the factories back will discover that you can get the factories back. Still, you can’t bring the jobs back

The unpicking of globalization may accelerate on several fronts irrespective of when Covid19 is brought under control, and this could be bad news for developing countries such as Pakistan,India and Bangladesh etc.The globalization boom allowed countries in southeast Asia to rise to middle-income status. There is a concern that we may see a leapfrogging in countries that are emerging the way that China had a chance to put its massive population to work in factories. There is a worry that for developing countries that are just emerging at that stage, and the world may move to a post-industrial economy and leave them behind. It is a genuine concern, and they are not the only people who stand to lose out from deglobalization in rich countries like the United States and Britain.Those most in favour of reigning in globalization could suffer the most. Economic nationalism will not prove to be a silver bullet it’s very likely that policies of deglobalization or economic nationalism that try to bring the factories back will discover that you can get the factories back. Still, you can’t bring the jobs back.Because when the factories are brought back almost always, they will be more highly automated than they were in China.But even as the world becomes more de-globalized, some of the biggest winners from globalization will endure big digital companies like Netflix,Google and Facebook will keep getting bigger.With the pandemic accelerating the trend towards shopping online companies following the Amazon model of fast direct delivery will also do well.The top 10 per cent even in the worst sectors, worst meeting hardest-hit sectors could well emerge with a winning business model.Ibelieve in every crisis you find some companies that fall behind and those that are fundamentally able to re-jig their business models and innovate are the ones that thrive in the post-Covid19 world.Some aspects of globalization affected by the pandemic may shift back, such as freedom to travel.The world has grown too integrated for a full unwinding of globalization.The Covid19 will not kill it off; it will deepen the cracks; however, this may not be all bad news.I’m hopeful that we’ll learn the right lessons that we need to make our societies more resilient so that we don’t resort to elementary solutions.We don’t work like shut down the supply chain build a wall keep the immigrants out we’ve tried those things before.I think the broader solution is to make interdependence work with the resilience that’s the challenge that global leaders face today.

Special Advisor (Pakistan Institute of Management, Lahore operated under Federal Ministry of Industries and Production, Islamabad) and Foreign Research Associate (Centre of Excellence, China Pakistan Economic Corridor, Islamabad)