Author(s): Shirley Ayangbah
This paper investigates the impacts of increasing US private sector participation in offshored and internationally fragmented manufacturing production networks on key aspects of domestic innovation capacity, employment conditions, and distributional equality. Granular customs statistics detail surging intermediate input import reliance across industries over recent decades (USITC, 2022). Multi-country input-output tables trace overseas value capture from shifting production loci (OECD, 2022). Historic case analyses of electronics and machinery sectors reveal eroded production linkages accompanying acceleration offshore (Brandt, 2017). Causal structural models illuminate muted productivity gains from accessed overseas expertise counterweighed by declining labor share amid regional manufacturing clusters displacement tied to expanded trade exposure (Autor et al. 2022). Tailored trade, innovation and labor policy combinations promise sustaining global integration advantages while resuscitating lagging domestic commons sufficient for equitable and resilient national output. In summary, the empirical trade data, case research, structural models and cluster analysis indicate potential generative capacity risks from unfettered global fragmentation unmanaged by supporting development of specialized domestic tools essential for spreading gains. Strategic governance recalibration aims at balancing access and resilience.