https://wccftech.com/covid-19-pandemic-accelerating-re-shoring/

COVID-19 has been detrimental to the global supply chain that fuels the consumer electronics industry. In a recent report, IDC said that there's an 80% chance for significant contraction in worldwide semiconductor revenues in 2020 instead of a previously expected minor overall growth of 2%, as factories slowly reboot and their respective suppliers recover. Knowing that a protracted period of stagnant supply chains could be equally as economically damaging as the pandemic itself, Japan has put in place a program to provide emergency loans to companies to accelerate the 're-shoring' of overseas factories.

According to the Nikkei Asian Review, the state-run Development Bank of Japan has allocated $9 billion for loans to companies to be used in supply chain restructuring due to COVID-19. In addition, Tokyo has earmarked funds for wage subsidies to offset the higher labor costs in Japan as well as to purchase labor-saving devices such as robots or other means to automate factories. According to data from the country's Ministry of Finance, imports from China dropped by nearly 50% in February as mass quarantine crippled China's industrial capacity (China's National Bureau of Statistics said that industrial output had dropped 13.5% for the first two months of the year).