The trend toward more “nearshoring” to alleviate the global supply chain chaos is not new but is increasingly important, according to Deloitte Vice Chairman of US Industrial Products & Construction Leader Paul Wellener.
Nearshoring is “bringing things closer to the marketplace or bringing things back into the US marketplace. And those were trends that were starting well before the pandemic got started and really changed the way we think about supply chains,” Wellener told Yahoo Finance (video above).
The trend “started even a decade or so ago when we had the Fukushima nuclear accident” and “issues with tariffs over the years,” he explained. Combined with other pandemic “weather related disruptions” and “the war going on in Russia and Ukraine,” it is clear that manufacturers are looking to reduce dependency overseas once again.
“Right now, there’s a lot of things that have disrupted supply chain,” Wellener added. “So manufacturers are thinking about: How do they mitigate risk?”
One way companies are trying to mitigate risk is “to bring things back to where they have a little bit more control over the supply chain, so bring some of those things on shore,” the executive added.
