Logistic and spatial reorganization of maritime-port supply chains in Mexico: Between trade neo-protectionism and the COVID-19 pandemic

Abstract

In recent years, the maritime-port supply chains mobilized through global intermodal transport networks have faced adverse scenarios derived both from the geopolitical tensions expressed in neo-protectionism and the trade war between the main world powers, as well as the sudden and devastating appearance of the COVID-19 pandemic. This context has provided evidence of certain vulnerabilities of the logistical and spatial fragmentation of the productive processes derived from the economic globalization that have prevailed in the last three decades. The trade war between central countries of the world-economy, but above all the irruption of the COVID-19 pandemic caused huge imbalances that abruptly interrupted the regularity and continuity of the supply of inputs and goods from the extensive productive chains that are mainly articulated in a global space through complex maritime and intermodal transport network. Arising from the above, this proposal seeks to advance in the identification of the logistical and spatial impacts of COVID-19 in the maritime transport of goods and in the Mexican ports, as well as to visualize, broadly speaking, the emerging trends of spatial articulation of globalized supply chains, with the aim of provide qualitative elements that eventually contribute or assist to the construction of post-pandemic scenarios, based on a structural-systemic theoretical-methodological approach, based on the creation of a networks space and global flows.