Source: Fortune
Southeast Asian nations invested heavily in capturing manufacturing diverted from China during trade tensions and supply chain reshuffling. The strategy is underdelivering because companies are diversifying across multiple countries rather than consolidating in a single regional alternative, fragmenting the economic gains these governments anticipated. Multinational corporations are hedging geopolitical risk by spreading investment across multiple locations instead of concentrating it, leaving Southeast Asia competing fiercely with India, Vietnam, and others for incremental capacity rather than securing dominant positions in reshored industries.