Importantly, China’s share of world exports increased by 1.6 pps over the same period, whereas the respective proportion for Poland rose by 0.14 pp. Simultaneously, a mere 6 per cent of the Polish enterprises surveyed by the PEI declared to already participate in the supply chain shift from China – as follows from the report of the Polish Economic Institute entitled Globalisation during the pandemic.

Thus far, the COVID-19 pandemic has not appeared to be a game changer in the world’s economic order. Global supply chains have been disrupted, but not permanently broken. Due to putting an effective curb on the COVID-19 pandemic, the Chinese economy started to bounce back quickly. In the third quarter of 2020, the rest of the world also began to recover from the recession. At the end of 2020, chip supplies appeared to be insufficient for the automotive industry. According to various estimates, chip shortages might result in car production cuts by as many as 1 to 1.5 million pieces in the first half of 2021 (Święcicki, Ambroziak, 2021). Restrictions aimed at curbing the spread of the pandemic caused problems with unloading container ships, which pushed up sea freight rates by 309 per cent between the beginning of 2020 and the beginning of 2021. Supply chain disruptions due to the COVID-19 pandemic made a number of countries in the world intervene in international trade. The most frequent measures were export subsidies. Much tension concerned trade in medical devices, medicines and vaccines.

‘Our analysis confirms that the directions of developments in the world economy have been determined not only by economic factors related to the pandemic. The increasing system and political rivalry has played a major role as well. Whereas the consequences of the pandemic might affect corporate risk and cost calculations within supply chains, with short-term transport costs still significantly higher and deliveries of certain components insufficient, a more important driver of the long-term situation will be the US and EU measures oriented towards reducing their dependence on China. First and foremost, there will be long-term pressure to relocate production from China and active industrial policies aimed to strengthen the competitiveness of America and Europe’, says Marek Wąsiński, the head of the foreign trade team at the Polish Economic Institute.

In economic terms, China has benefited the most from the pandemic

The greatest beneficiary of the COVID-19 pandemic in merchandise trade is China. In 2020, the country’s share of world exports went up by 1.6 pps to 14.7 per cent. It was possible due to China’s putting an effective curb on the pandemic and adjusting production quickly to the rising global demand for certain articles, especially products related to fighting the pandemic, electronic devices and electrical equipment.

Despite various announcements of shifting production from China made by a number of companies in the spring of 2020, there have been few actual relocations. Global value chains appeared to be inflexible in the face of demand and supply disruptions as well as of growing problems in maritime transport. It was particularly noticeable in the automotive sector, based on just-in-time manufacturing and not prepared for component shortages at the first stage of the pandemic or for delayed chip deliveries in late 2020. Neither are there indications of an initiated process of mass relocation of production to the new EU Member States, e.g. Poland.

Polish exports resilient to the pandemic

From the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, Poland coped rather well in merchandise exports against the background of other countries. Throughout 2020, the value of Polish exports (expressed in EUR) was lower, but by a mere 0.3 per cent than a year before. It was the third best result in the EU. As imports recovered more slowly than exports, the former dropped by nearly 5 per cent in 2020. Consequently, Poland’s merchandise trade surplus reached a record high of EUR 12 billion.