AbstractIn this paper, we examine the survival capacity of trade relationships in cross‐border production chains. Our main contribution is to show that there are differences in the probability of export interruption between intermediate and final stages along the global value chain, finding a lower sensitivity of intermediate goods to the increasing competition from lower‐income countries. In addition, the paper also makes a methodological contribution by using time‐discrete duration models with product‐country random effects to control for unobservable heterogeneity and by including interactions in the model, in order to identify the sources of these differences. Our estimates show that variables such asEUmembership, export experience, product and market diversification, initial trade value, destination market size, geographical proximity and economic proximity reduce the likelihood of export failure more for intermediate than for final goods, being the differential impact particularly higher for the two first variables. These results would suggest that factors that reduce uncertainty and search costs and increase trust and reliability among production partners are particularly relevant for intermediate stages, fostering the probability of remaining an active member of global production chains.