Friend-Shoring

English remains the lingua franca of the world for a number of reasons, not least its willingness to dynamically keep on adding contrived words to its lexicon to describe topical situations. “Friend-Shoring” is a compound word which has caught my attention lately. For a while I was trying to capture the concept to describe the Western World’s adaptation to the political realignments obviously occurring in global geopolitics. Perhaps led by China acting repressively towards Hong Kong, its long time antipathy to Taiwan, its brazen implantation of overseas police stations and dubious Confucius Institutes in foreign countries, the Sino relationship has been under threat for some time. Commercial rivalry is a major factor of course. Then we see the official visit of Putin to Beijing for the 2022 Olympics just days before the invasion of Ukraine on 24th February. As if the topic of this evil intention didn’t come up during that connivance! China has since refused to condemn the outrage of the aggression. India, South Africa and Saudi Arabia lead the way in failing to align with the majority of democracies against authoritarian governments. Which brings me back to this new catch word “Friend-Shoring.” At one and the same time it implies a complete reorientation of western commercial relations between the at-risk democracies and the China-Russia block. Rethink off-shore manufacturing policies and supply chain issues with China, minimize reliance on Russian energy. A major decoupling process is underway as Jens Stoltenberg leads NATO to shore up commercial and political interaction internally between allies at the expense of relations with what must now be deemed pariah states.