Trade flows and supply chain resilience in the era of the COVID pandemic

Global trade was severely hit in 2020, and the pandemic greatly affected one of the pillars grounding the present production model: the global logistic system and management of supply chains. In spite of similar lockdown measures for almost the entire economic system in Europe and common border restraints imposed by the various European countries, trade trends proved to react rather differently during the most critical months of the pandemic crisis. The analysis of export data expressed in «value» highlights a more irregular trend for Italy compared to Germany and the Netherlands. Yet when looking at export data expressed in «quantity» differences among countries are less evident. Besides, no country grouping clearly emerged from the analysis of export trends during the 2020 fall and the 2021 recovery. By contrast, analysis of import growth rates, whether calculated from data in «value» or in «quantity», underlines substantial differences between Euro-Mediterranean and North European countries. Italy, France and Spain recorded a greater reduction in imports in the period January-May 2020 and a better recovery in January-May 2021. The net result of such import trends over the entire period under observation is that Euro-Mediterranean countries performed worse than their North European counterparts during the pandemic. Analysis of both data expressed in «value» and in «quantity» confirms this result. Moreover, when analyzing import data by sector, a marked difference between imports of manufacturing products and imports of raw materials clearly emerges: imports of manufacturing products in Euro-Mediterranean countries almost kept pace with those in Northern Europe while, with regard to imports of raw materials, the recovery of Euro-Med countries during the first months of 2021 was largely insufficient to offset losses in previous months. In other words, during the pandemic, Euro-Mediterranean production systems experienced a sizeable reduction of primary commodity imports, compared to those in Northern Europe. Whether this under-performance can be considered the result of an even greater fall in demand for raw materials or of disruption along the supply chains and poorer logistic systems in Euro-Med countries, is a question that deserves further analysis, carried out over a longer period of time. However, what was highlighted in the chapter is fully consistent with recently emerging dynamics: during the COVID-19 pandemic, most globally integrated companies experienced input shortages for their production processes and rising costs of logistic services. Moreover, weaker production systems seem to have suffered more, in confirmation of this descriptive analysis.