Transnational Production Networks in the Automobile Industry

This report provides from insights on how regionalisation affects the automobile industry, and on regionalisation processes in general. Heribert Dieter teases out the role of State (essentially business leaders) in promoting processes of economic regionalisation in both continents. Drawing from the European and Asian examples, the author demonstrates how trade policy affects the commercial and industrial decisions of automobile manufacturers.
In the Asian case he shows how the problems arising from rules of origin can have deleterious results for automobile manufacturers in setting up transnational production networks. Thus he argues for developing in Asia a single regulatory scheme, concretely a Pan Asian cumulation of origin framework. While he sees an East Asian Customs Union as a better option, a cumulation
of origin scheme would at least be an improvement on the present opaque system.