The war in Ukraine, Covid-19 and the rise of China will force multinational companies to embrace a new version of globalisation, where cutting costs comes second to a “predictability premium”, the US ambassador to Japan has said.In an interview seven months after his arrival in Tokyo, Rahm Emanuel said recent supply chain upheaval and Beijing’s regulatory unpredictability had exposed the dangers of over-reliance on China, drawing Japanese companies to invest in the US.
A two-month spree of multibillion-dollar investment pledges in the US by some of Japan’s biggest companies, including Toyota, Panasonic and Honda, was just the start, said Emanuel, a former chief of staff for Barack Obama who has close ties to US president Joe Biden.
“You really have a different iteration of globalisation emerging,” he said. “The last 20 years have been organised around cost and efficiency. That’s being either balanced against or replaced by stability and sustainability.”