Coronavirus Affects Trading Activity

US companies in 2019 sourced fewer completed goods from 14 joint Asian trading partners mostly, possibly as a direct result of US administration trade policies, according to the seventh yearly Kearney US Reshoring Index. The ongoing business war sent the Reshoring Index to a record high in 2019.

The Reshoring Index compares US domestic product gross production to the level of making imports from 14 popular Asian low-cost countries (LCCs): China, Taiwan, Malaysia, India, Vietnam, Thailand, Indonesia, Singapore, Philippines, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Hong Kong, Sri Lanka, and Cambodia.

Percent Deterioration

Kearney, a global administration consulting firm that measures the index, credits much of the critical 2019 shift to a 17 percent deterioration in US imports of mass-produced goods from China, which has long been the leading choice for offshore production. Intriguingly, manufactured imports from Vietnam and Mexico both occurred last year, evidence that US companies started to significantly adapt their sourcing procedures even when the coronavirus affects trading, interrupting global supply chains early in 2020.

In 2019, US manufacturing was reserved, while imports from the 14 Asian trading associates notably failed. Imports of manufactured goods from the 14 Asian LCCs shrunk to $757 billion from $816 billion in 2018—a 7.2 percent reduction—while US national industrial production was $6,271 billion in 2019, essentially constant from 2018.

As a result, the US market-implied just 12.1 cents worth of offshore product from the Asian LCCs for every $1 of domestic production gross output in 2019, nearly a full percentage point reduction in similar imports from the preceding year.

Trade Dynamics

US trade organizations also seem to be improving trade dynamics among and between the different countries exporting produced goods to the US. While US production imports from China declined, imports from the other Asian LCC countries developed by $31 billion in 2019. Similarly, manufacturing imports from Mexico rose $13 billion.

‘Much of China’s loss was Vietnam’s increase,’ stated Patrick Van den Bossche, Kearney partner and co-author of the research. “Of the $31 billion in US imports that moved from China to other Asian LCCs, almost half (46 percent) was occupied by Vietnam, which exported $14 billion more produced goods to the US in 2019 than it did in 2018.”

“The door for these radicals was presented by ongoing US-China trade disputes, as their profits were mainly in stock levels impacted by tariffs,” observed Yuri Castano, Kearney manager and co-author of the study. “The trade war jolted US organizations to start rethinking and reshaping their networks.”

Coronavirus Affects Trading

“2020 dawned with a division of a new order of degree―COVID-19,” wrote Brooks Levering, Kearney partner and co-author of the study. “We expect that the hard lessons of this crisis will force companies to go much further in rethinking their sourcing policies― certainly, their entire supply connections.”

“Three decades ago,” Van den Bossche notes, “US generators began production and sourcing in China for one reason: prices. The US-China trade war took a second dimension more completely into the equation―risk―as rates and the threat of disrupted China imports helped companies to weigh surety of supply more fully alongside prices. COVID-19 brings a third dimension more fully into the mix, and arguably to the fore: resilience―the ability to foresee and adjust to unforeseen systemic confusions.”