WTO Releases New Report Analyzing Global Value Chain Resilience

The World Trade Organization and the Asian Development Bank, along with three other institutions, released a new report Nov. 16 looking into the state of global value chain resilience, finding that GVCs have shown to be resilient in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic, the WTO said Nov. 16. Identifying recent GVC trends, the report notes the increasing role of services and intellectual property and GVCs' importance in the global economic recovery.

"Global Value Chain Development Report 2021: Beyond Production" finds that "there has been no generalized reshoring of production in response to the pandemic." The publication analyzes GVCs beyond manufacturing goods, breaking down how value added in these chains is increasingly found through services, offering new opportunities for less-developed countries to play a greater role in world trade. Asian countries, for instance, have "dramatically increased" their share of GVC trade, the WTO said. WTO and the ADB co-published the report with the Research Institute for Global Value Chains at the University of International Business and Economics, the Institute of Developing Economies and the China Development Research Foundation.

"As COVID-19 recedes, GVCs will no doubt be a major influence in the recovery to come. This recovery must be used to reinvigorate a trading system that serves and improves the lives of everyone," WTO Director-General Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala and ADB President Masatsugu Asakawa note in the report's foreword. "Understanding where, in these chains, value is created and how it is shared among its actors is central to ensure that everyone obtains a fair share in the gains from trade."