Fragmentation of production and economic integration in North America: Centrifugal and centripetal forces

Abstract

International fragmentation of production and economic integration are two structural motors of change that have characterized the global economy for decades. However, an interest in analyzing these two processes together has recently intensified due to the neo-protectionist turn in trade and economic policy in the United States. This paper examines trade and productive relations between Mexico, the United States and Canada, demonstrating how the global value chains (GVCs) in which they participate obscure global tendencies (centrifugal forces) and regional counter-tendencies (centripetal forces) that provoke changes in the geography and composition of productive linkages. These processes have the result of restructuring, and to a certain extent disintegrating, the regional bloc.