Global Value Chains (GVCs) have demonstrated remarkable resilience despite a confluence of global pressures, including rising geopolitical tensions, financial uncertainty, climate change, and the lingering effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. This is a core finding of the GVC Development Report 2025: Rewiring GVCs in a Changing Global Economy, launched at the World Trade Organization (WTO) headquarters.
The biennial report—a joint publication by the Asian Development Bank (ADB), the Research Institute for Global Value Chains (UIBE), the Institute of Developing Economies – Japan External Trade Organization (IDE-JETRO), the World Economic Forum, and the WTO Secretariat—confirms that globalization is enduring, but rapidly evolving.
WTO Director-General Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala underscored the report’s significance at the launch event, titled “Rewiring GVCs in a Changing Global Economy.”
“This new report has reaffirmed something we at the WTO have been saying: Globalization is far from over, and global value chains remain indispensable. The share of GVC trade in the global total has only marginally declined from its 2022 peak of 48%, to 46.3% last year,” DG Okonjo-Iweala stated.
The report finds that firms and governments are not abandoning global integration but are actively reconfiguring it to address new economic, political, and social priorities. This process, referred to as ‘rewiring,’ is driven by four major dimensions:
Geographic Reconfiguring: Adjusting supply chain locations.
Technological Transformation: Driven by digitalization and automation.
Governance Innovation: Featuring new industrial policies and targeted trade agreements.
Environmental Restructuring: Through green investment and carbon pricing mechanisms.
DG Okonjo-Iweala championed a path of “re-globalization,” a re-imagined form of global integration focused on diversification and inclusion.
“This goes in the same direction as what we have been pushing for under the banner of ‘re-globalization’: a re-imagined globalization that helps to diversify global value chains and uses it to bring more economies that were on the margins of the global economy into the mainstream,” she said.
However, the report highlights that the current rewiring process has mostly benefited established suppliers. Significant challenges, including policy-driven increases in trade costs, sharp policy uncertainty, and a persistent annual trade finance gap exceeding US $1 trillion, are disproportionately burdensome for marginalized regions.
To overcome these obstacles and make GVCs more diversified and resilient, the report points to new trends in governance cooperation:
Shift to Targeted Deals: While traditional bilateral and regional agreements continue, cooperation is increasingly taking the form of informal, non-binding, issue-specific frameworks.
Digital and Critical Minerals Focus: The report identifies more than 180 targeted trade deals focusing on digital trade and critical minerals signed as of 2024, arrangements that help build trust and predictability in the new global governance landscape.
The launch featured key findings presented by the report’s editor-in-chief, former WTO Chief Economist Robert Koopman, and ADB Chief Economist Albert Park. The event also included discussions with the report’s authors and sessions presenting perspectives from government officials and business leaders. Closing messages were delivered by UIBE President Zhao Zhongxiu and IDE-JETRO President Fukunari.
