Norm Assembly in Global Value Chains

This Article studies the phenomenon of transnational suppliers in global value chains (GVCs) and explores their legal consequences. In today’s “made in the world” era of dispersed production, it is often assumed that multinational brands, usually based in developed economies, are the rulemakers in global trade, who dictate the terms of engagement to a sprawling, unruly network of foreign suppliers and contractors worldwide. This conceptualization of “buyer-driven” globalization and highly asymmetric bargaining power undergird a wide range of laws and policies aimed at regulating cross-border commerce, including supplier auditing regimes, supply chain disclosure obligations, and corporate social responsibility initiatives. By contrast, this Article argues that this stylized portrait of transnational commerce is no longer complete. Today, just as brands and retailers in developed economies divest and outsource, their foreign-based first-tier suppliers, in an osmosis move, have increasingly scaled up and consolidated. 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 relative shift in global economic power carries legal implications ripe for exploration. This includes private law issues such as contracting practice and corporate social responsibility designs, as well as quasi-regulatory and transnational issues such as standard settings and provision of public goods, including global health. In mapping this terrain, I invite 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 relevant norms. Reconceptualizing one-way enforcement “chains” as a sort of co-production recognizes the relevance, organizational logic, and regulatory potential of transnational suppliers in today’s GVC landscapes—increasingly critical arenas of not only economic activities but also national security, geopolitics rivalry, and human rights