WEBINAR RECORDING · 2023-04
Friends making sense of Friend-shoring:Costs, Benefits and Prospects
In this conversation: Emily Benson and Dan Ciuriak; moderator Mia Mikic, with Ben Shepherd and Hanna Norberg.
Emily Benson and Dan Ciuriak distinguish supply-chain risk management from politically driven friend-shoring. Moderated by Mia Mikic, the conversation examines what governments would need to specify, how firms could respond, and why third-country development and longer-run strategic consequences belong in the assessment.
Session information draws on the recording and its original description. Affiliations and policy context refer to the time of the webinar.
FROM THE CONVERSATION
Three takeaways.
What they mean in practice.
Prepared from the session recording using automatic transcription and editorial review. Follow the timestamp links for the original wording and context.
Define the risk before prescribing relocation
Watch 20:13 ↗Ciuriak distinguishes nearshoring’s logistics considerations, reshoring’s domestic production objectives, and friend-shoring’s geopolitical boundaries. He also separates absorbing a shock from restoring production and maintaining alternative capacity. These are related but different problems, with different instruments and costs.
Policy interpretation: Specify the vulnerability and desired response before funding relocation. Diversified suppliers, inventories, recovery capacity, and domestic production should be compared against the particular risk rather than treated as interchangeable forms of resilience.
Political alignment does not create viable suppliers
Watch 28:19 ↗Benson argues that friendship is an imprecise sourcing criterion: access to critical inputs and private-sector feasibility matter. Her small-firm example illustrates the difficulty of replacing a long-standing Chinese supplier without contacts or a commercially viable alternative. She places responsibility on governments to clarify national-security objectives and facilitate alternatives.
Policy interpretation: Provide stable criteria and practical supplier information if public policy asks firms to reorganize. Announcements alone do not solve matching costs, capabilities, or the uncertainty created by changing lists of favored partners.
Include outsiders and future responses in the evaluation
Watch 41:15 ↗Shepherd asks how Southeast Asian economies can navigate relationships with both China and the United States. Benson sees room for third countries between investment incentives and restrictions, while noting the absence of conventional market-access concessions in newer frameworks. Ciuriak stresses development relationships and the possibility that restrictions create future competitive or retaliatory responses.
Policy interpretation: Assess opportunities and burdens for partner countries, not only the initiating economy. Include investment, innovation, and strategic feedback over time when comparing immediate security gains with economic costs.
From the discussion
At 40:20–43:54, Benson challenges the suggestion that security benefits are wholly intangible, but says it is too early to establish friend-shoring’s success. At 36:15–39:14, Ciuriak explains why maintaining emergency capacity may need continuing public finance rather than a one-off investment. At 61:26–64:18, Benson calls for research on export controls’ economic and geopolitical effects. These exchanges expose unresolved measurement questions rather than deliver a single cost-benefit estimate.
Recording references
- Recording: distinguishing supply-chain objectives — 20:13–25:07
- Recording: friends, inputs, and supplier feasibility — 28:19–32:26
- Recording: benefits, third countries, and strategic effects — 41:15–50:37; 61:26–64:18
