Norm Assembly in Global Value Chains

Abstract

This Article explores the phenomenon of transnational suppliers in global value chains. It is often assumed that multinational brands, usually based in developed economies, are the rule makers in global trade, who dictate the terms of engagement to a sprawling, dispersed network of foreign suppliers and contractors worldwide. This stylized picture of globalization is no longer accurate. Today, just as corporate retailers divest and outsource, their first-tier suppliers, in an osmosis move, have increasingly scaled up and consolidated to meet the demands of global production and competition. As a result, a group of powerful but largely hidden global economic actors—transnational suppliers and manufacturers—have emerged as a new crop of multinational enterprises. This Article describes this relative shift in private global economic power and investigates their legal implications. In mapping this terrain, it invites envisioning supply chain governance as a co-production process of “norm assembly,” whereby “Big Suppliers,” alongside their corporate buyers and other actors, contribute to the creation, interpretation, and implementation of a range of legal and business norms. Reconceptualizing one-way enforcement “chains” as a sort of co-production is significant because it recognizes the relevance, organizational logics, and regulatory potentials of transnational suppliers in today’s GVC landscapes—increasingly critical arenas of not only economic activities but also security, human rights, and geopolitics contestation.