Supply chain crisis brewing
...
Cargo ships anchored off California and New York, and in rail yards and on trucking routes, shipping consumer goods are incredibly backlogged due to a lack of manpower and pandemic restrictions to unload the goods. And now, there are warnings that the supply chain may be on the brink of collapse.
Shipping ports which normally only had one or two ships in dock waiting to be unloaded prior to the pandemic now have dozens lined up, waiting to be unloaded for up to four weeks, slowing the whole chain. In Los Angeles and Long Beach, as many as 73 vessels were waiting to be unloaded last month. The bottlenecks at the ports are also impacting railways and trucking. In Chicago — that has one of the largest rail yards — it was at one point backed up for 25 miles.
...
That’s caused prices to soar, for everything in the supply chain which, of course, will be passed on to the consumers.
Pre-Covid, the cost of shipping a container from China to the US’s West Coast was roughly $1,300. Today, that cost has risen exponentially, with the cost of transporting one container being roughly $35,000.
And the right to use these containers goes the highest bidder, hurting a host of retailers, especially small ones.
These retailers cannot afford the increasing cost to transport their inventory, and many have gone out of business.
Some have tried to turn to air freighters, and that’s overwhelmed that system and made everything more expensive there, as well.
“This has turned the economy upside down,” a logistics expert told the Daily Mail. Unions that represent shipping workers around the world are warning of a coming “global transport systems collapse.”
...
There is much more.
This also exposes the downside to globalization that makes everyone more vulnerable. Between lockdowns and this the world's economy is stalling too.
Comments
Post a Comment