(Re)organising production geographies: Shifting production networks in the US-Singapore free trade agreement

Abstract

Focusing on the US-Singapore Free Trade Agreement (USSFTA), this study adopts a Global Production Network (GPN) framework in exploring the implications of this FTA on the strategies of electronics firms. This approach casts its analytical lens upon the interplay of factors and relational geometries among actors in restructuring the GPNs of firms. I argue that the USSFTA, as a form of radical rescaling of economic and geographical space, will result in strategic reorientations amongst firms, prompting a series of spatial restructuring in the organization and geography of production networks. Findings illustrate intensification of flows as firms (re)centre their production geographies on the Indonesia-Malaysia-Singapore Growth-Triangle. Although shifting relationality under the USSFTA engenders new networks of reciprocity and opens new opportunities for Singaporea??s firms in particular, issues of territoriality and historical specificity of the electronics production network continue to impose limits on power enhancement and magnify existing patterns of uneven development. Altogether, this research presents insights on the relationships between PTAs, firm activities, power relations and development.