Abstract

For several decades, multinational enterprises (MNEs) have offshored their manufacturing activities to low-cost countries to achieve significant productivity gains. However, changes in the relative competitiveness of countries, social effects of deindustrialization in advanced economies and the vulnerability of global value chains (GVCs) revealed by the Covid-19 pandemic have encouraged some firms, supported by governments, to «reshore» part, or all of their offshore industrial operations back to their home country. This phenomenon has been observed in most of the main Western economies, including Italy. Firstly, this paper analyses the numerous endogenous and exogenous factors that motivate the companies’ reshoring strategies. Secondly, it carries out a comparative review of the reshoring policies implemented in Italy, the EU, France, Germany, the United Kingdom and the United States. Lastly, general policy recommendations are provided. This paper fills a gap in the literature by connecting the micro-level supply chain management analysis of firms’ reshoring drivers with the macro-level economic policy perspective on reshoring.