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"Today, nations can industrialise by joining a supply chain – there is no need to build a supply chain. Indeed in some industries the concept of a one-nation supply chain has disappeared. No nation today produces all the parts and components necessary to make aircraft, cars, or electronics. Some nations are headquarter-economies, others are factory-economies, but no one has the whole value chain. This matters.
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Globalisation is often viewed as driven by the gradual lowering of natural and manmade trade costs. This is a serious misunderstanding.
- Globalisation made a giant leap when steam power slashed shipping costs;
- It made another when ICT decimated coordination costs.
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Steam power changed (this) by radically lowering transport costs.
- Railroads and steamships made it feasible to spatially separate production and consumption.
- Once the separation was feasible, scale economies and comparative advantage made it inevitable.
This was globalisation’s 1st great unbundling. Trade theory was developed to understand its
economic impact.
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i) cheap transport favoured large-scale production, ii) such production is very complex, and iii) close proximity lowers the cost of coordinating complexity.
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Plainly some of proximity’s cost-savings are related to communications. As telecommunications became cheap, reliable, and widespread from the mid-1980s, the ‘coordination glue’ began to loosen. Telecom advances united with vast strides in computing power, transmission capacities, and software to create the information and communication technology (ICT) revolution.
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- It became increasingly economical to geographically separate manufacturing stages – to unbundle the factories.
- Once the separation was feasible, scale economies and comparative advantage made it inevitable.This was globalisation’s 2nd unbundling; production stages previously performed in close proximity were dispersed to reduce production costs. Theories to understand its implications are only now emerging.
The unbundling, however, was not global. It was regional.
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- Production dispersion did not end the need to coordinate production stages – it internationalised it
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- 20th century trade is the selling of goods made in factories in one nation to customers in another; the trade system is largely about demand, i.e. selling things.
In this world, goods are ‘packages’ of a single nation’s productive factors, technology, social capital, governance capacity, etc. Of course, 20th century trade is still with us.
- 21st century trade involves continuous, two-way flows of things, people, training, investment, and information that used to take place within factories and offices; the trade system is also about supply, i.e. making things.
Goods are ‘packages’ of a many nations’ productive factors, technology, social capital, and governance capacity; a nation’s trade pattern is inseparable from its position in the supply chain."
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Depois, o artigo lista uma série de exemplos asiáticos com diferentes desfechos, Coreia, Malásia, Tailândia, e procura relacionar esses resultados com o momento temporal em que foram feitos.
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Quando a Coreia se industrializou, os custos de comunicação/coordenação eram suficientemente elevados para obrigar a que o "cortex cerebral" acompanhasse fisicamente esses projectos de industrialização. Nos países seguintes tal já não foi necessário. Interrogo-me se não foi o mesmo que se passou com a Renault e a Autoeuropa em Portugal. Quando a Renault veio para Portugal teve de arranjar o máximo de fornecedores locais por necessidade económica, quando a Autoeuropa veio para Portugal o arranjar fornecedores locais era uma imposição política (falhada) e não resultou.
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O offshoring minou por completo este modelo de industrialização que procurava substituir importações com o desaparecimento do conceito de supply-chain num único país.
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Lê-se o texto sobre a agonizante industria automóvel malaia e tailandesa e não conseguimos deixar de pensar nos exemplos de "queima" de dinheiro dos contribuintes para acarinhar o ego de sucessivos governos portugueses.
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