“World is Flat” - Works in all situations… Really?

Flat World took a beating in wake of the Covid-19 onslaught. While Covid-19 will be gone tomorrow or day after tomorrow but it will make a big dent in our flat world. We all will have to sit back and rethink, if the strategy, “All eggs in one basket” with manufacturing really works?

Adam Smith’s Absolute Advantage Theory, Darwin’s Survival of the Fittest Theory and many other factors led to concentration of manufacturing in one or few (let us be politically correct) countries. Manufacturing almost vanished from many nations as it made no business sense.

With the Covid-19 situation we all realized how much we are dependent on few nations for our essential and critical needs. As a welfare sovereign nation – every country must think about how they meet the needs of their citizens. A careful classification of goods & services into two categories “Essential / Critical” and “Nonessential/Luxury”. Essential goods & services either will be manufactured/sourced from country itself or they will identify more than two vendor countries for procuring these. Non Essential, Luxury goods & services strategy can remain the same and whoever is best to produce will produce and others will consume as they wish.  We will leave Lamborghini be manufactured by Italy; not all nations have to make their own Lamborghini….

Thoughts?