“The ultimate impact of the global pandemic is an amplification of the weaknesses of those who were not already aligning to a fast future!” - Futurist Jim Carroll

That's what I predicted last March in one of my "Ask a Futurist" videos, the question being "What is Going to Happen to Globalization?" I predicted that with global supply chains becoming subjected to increased stress - and massively broken - companies would have to hire themselves a Chief Resiliency Officer in order to get through.

With headlines dominated today by news of broken supply chains, I guess I pretty much nailed this one in advance. With that in mind, here are my original observations from that show from almost 7 months ago.

The question? "What's the future of globalization? How will trade patterns and supply chains change as a result of what's happened in the last year?" 

Here's what I filmed:

Here's what we know:

  • it's pretty clear that supply chains are broken: any discussion today is all about resilience, backup, multiple sourcing. Some companies have strategies in place that provide for triple or quadruple sourcing for product
  • Covid-19 didn't just break them - it highlighted what was wrong with them - in that companies and nations did not build any sort of resilience into their global supply chains
  • fast trends highlighted this weakness: as the world rushed to online shopping, companies that were exposed were quickly exposed!
  • it has weaponized global trade: we saw this early on as nations locked down supplies with PPE, and we are seeing it now in real-time as countries block vaccine exports. This is a new fast trend with major implications
  • governments are finding new barriers: the pandemic provided a convenient opportunity to revive talk and action around protectionism
  • trust has been eroded: the impact of all of this is that global trust has broken down on a massive scale
  • damage must be fixed: expect this issue to be the focus of much corporate and global organizational discussion over years to come. G7 meetings will spend a lot of time on this issue, and companies will revise global trade contracts to better protect themselves
  • localization accelerates: countries and companies are obviously moving to produce locally when and where they can, but as I identify in the video, many have not addressed the skills and other issues that come with this
  • and so global trade patterns are forever transformed: we aren't going back to where we were - we are only going to where we will be!

It's not as though supply chains and global trade were already being transformed. Protectionist moves and the impact of the 2008-09 downturn were already dominating the trend:

  • global trade was already falling in 2019 due to global politics
  • and it was already falling as a result of the economic downturn of 2009
  • global supply chains ceased expanding after 2008!
  • it then shrunk by 9.2% through 2020

This is all pretty obvious - so what does it mean? I had this to say in the video:

The ultimate impact of our post-Covid world is that it will amplify the weaknesses of those who were not already aligning to a fast future.

Think about that in the context of retailers who did not have an e-commerce strategy; they thought they had 10 years to prepare, but only had a matter of weeks. Companies that were talking about localization because of trends that were already underway pre-pandemic suddenly found their lack of action exposed.

The long-term impact?

Upheaval, resilience, skills issues, and more!

Take this quote and pin it to your wall!