The COVID-19 pandemic is broadly impacting global supply chains with enterprises being prevented from producing and shipping raw inputs, semi-finished articles and end products, and governments adopting and maintain exporting restrictions on ventilators, masks, gloves, personal protective equipment and relevant inputs. The pandemic amplifies and accelerates the decoupling of US–China economic relations, reflecting US President Trump’s maxim 'economic security is national security' and delivered by a US–China trade war with numerous trade measures, including sanctions against Huawei.The attachment to economic security reflects a reversal of economic globalisation which used to posit economic interdependence as a safeguard for national security, but there is now a theory that overdependence is a threat to national security. In this context, there is a need for fresh look at the law and politics on export restrictions and sombre thought on the restructure of the global supply chain. Three key elements will be of critical importance in the post-COVID-19 world: ‘beggar-thy-neighbour’, economic security and the decoupling of the US–China economy.

With the internationalisation of production processes and multiplication of jurisdictions involved in these processes, global supply chains can be easily interrupted through weakest links. The fragmentation of production processes and internationalisation of supply chains complicatecoordination and risk management, which necessitate a fresh look of the governance mechanism. Competition law plays a critical role in ensuring supply is not disrupted through anti-competitive practices, such as export-cartel and abuse of dominant power in horizontal and vertical agreements. In linking export restrictions to investment law and policies, two types of investment are most relevant: resource-seeking and strategic asset-seeking investments. The interaction of export restrictions and investment law and policies can be observed from two perspectives: producers v. consumers; outbound v. inbound. A country imposing export restrictions on resources or strategic assets, such as critical components, may use trade and investment measuresm) simultaneously to prevent foreign countries or enterprises from accessing them.

Little is known about how subsidiaries of MNCs implement political CSR across Africa. The purpose of this paper is to determine how corporations respond to the many ‘pressures’ to align competing socioeconomic demands through political CSR and how that affects local communities in global supply chains. Based on field work in an emerging economy, we focus on a subsidiary of one of the world’s largest multinational palm oil producers and its HR Management. Contrary to what extant literature presents as pressures on MNCs to fulfil demands that are neither related to their raison d’être nor competence, we found that socioeconomic demands in low-income countries are rather the local communities’ natural response to shocks emanating from the presence of the subsidiary in their community. The ensuing dramatic changes in the socio-cultural, political and economic institutions underpinning their way of life are articulated as ‘5Ds’: dispossession of land; displacement of people; destruction of the environment; desperation; and de-democratization through disenfranchisement. Our micro-level analysis reveals HR managers’ dilemma. They are mostly torn between responding to community’s grievances and the profit-maximization intents of the firm. They make attempts to liaise and create dialogue but ultimately loyalty to the subsidiary is privileged over social demands.