Made in the World? Global Value Chains in the Midst of Rising Protectionism

In the last decade, the concept of ‘global value chain’ (GVC) has become popular to describe the way firms fragment production into different stages that are located in different economies. However, recent evidence indicates that there are lower levels of fragmentation of production. Some authors also suggest that supply chains are regional rather than global. We offer a comprehensive review of the evidence based on the 2018 update of the OECD trade in value added database. The ‘made in the world’ narrative is correct when describing the rise of GVCs in the 2000s. But globalization reached a peak in 2012, and since then supply chains are becoming more domestic rather than more regional.