Homecoming

Foroohar, a Financial Times columnist, argues that the era of hyper-globalised production is ending and that economic activity is relocalising, and that this is desirable rather than merely inevitable. She covers supply chain restructuring, energy, food, finance and technology.

Her case rests on several converging pressures: the pandemic exposed the fragility of long single-source supply chains; geopolitical conflict with China has made dependency a security issue; automation has reduced the labour cost advantage that drove offshoring; transport and energy costs have risen; and the political consequences of concentrated regional job losses have made the previous arrangement politically unsustainable in the countries that hosted the demand.

She argues for policies supporting regional production including industrial policy, local finance, distributed energy, and shorter supply chains, and she connects this to a broader critique of financialisation, arguing that capital markets organised around global efficiency systematically undervalue resilience and local economic health.

The book is journalism and advocacy rather than economic analysis. The evidence is case-based, the counterarguments about cost, consumer prices and the effect on developing economies are addressed briefly, and the claim that relocalisation is already happening at scale rests on announcements and policy rather than on realised investment. Readers should treat the diagnosis of fragility as well supported and the prescriptive argument as one position in a live dispute. The developing world consequences of the shift she advocates receive very little attention.