Story four
Entrepreneurial firms are pulling out of foreign markets at a rate not seen in two decades. Almost all of it is reported as failure.
Background: firms' presence in foreign markets over time. The bright lines leave and later return. The image is illustrative and does not plot the data.
Pulling out of a market is often a planned move. Born-international ventures enter a market, partly withdraw, keep a service presence and return when conditions improve. If you only record whether a firm is in or out, you miss the strategy.
News and reports from journalists, regulators and research bodies. None of it is my own work. I include it because it shows these questions in practice, and I check each item against the original source.
Only 16 percent of more than 2,400 surveyed exporters reported rising export orders in Q2 2026, the weakest reading in two decades outside 2008 and the pandemic.
The headline figure is an average. 11 percent of micro-exporters reported rising orders, against 26 percent of large firms. My research links gaps like this to firm-level capability and cognition.
Thirty-six percent of UK trading SMEs saw US export turnover fall after new tariffs, and 27 percent actively cut their US exposure, shifting toward France and Germany.
Firms kept trading internationally and moved their effort to other markets. Leaving one market paid for a presence in another.
Nokia plans to cut most of its mainland China workforce and close sites in stages, retaining only after-sales services after more than forty years.
Nokia is partly withdrawing and keeping a service presence. A simple entry-or-exit measure cannot capture this, but a measure of oscillation can.
Roughly 18,000 discriminatory trade measures since 2020, with nearly two thirds of global trade inside value chains being reshaped by geopolitics.
This fragmented trade system is the background for firms that localise selectively or rebuild their international reach through digital channels.
How it works
Peer-reviewed and accepted papers only. Papers still under review are described at the end but not listed, because they have not yet passed review.
Two further manuscripts, on re-internationalisation and on adapting to geopolitical fragmentation, are under review or in preparation. I will add details when they are published.
Judge a retreat by what the firm keeps and how easily the move can be reversed. The exit on its own says little. This also applies when evaluating regional export programmes.
So far, the pattern is documented in configurational analyses of specific samples. To learn how common it is, and which retreats can truly be reversed and which are only called strategic afterwards, I need longitudinal data the current work does not have.
