Globalism’s Achilles’ Heel
Supply chain disruptions have not been resolved, and it’s not clear when they will be. You’re seeing the effects of these disruptions at the store in the forms of shortages and higher prices.
Yet the supply chain is a subject that very few are familiar with beyond a superficial acquaintance.
Most people think the supply chain is just part of the global economy. That’s not entirely true. The supply chain is the global economy.
There isn’t a single good or service of any kind that does not arrive through a supply chain. Not one.
If the global supply chain is broken, then the global economy is broken. That increasingly appears to be the case.
The supply chain difficulties will grow worse. Even more troubling is the fact that the remedies will take years and sometimes decades to implement.
The reasons for this have to do with long lead times in implementing onshoring. For example, the U.S. can cut its dependence on Asian semiconductor imports by building its own semiconductor fabrication plans (fabs).
The problem is that these plants take from three–five years to build, and the scale needed is enormous.
There are impediments to supply chain recovery that are not directly related to particular supply chains that nonetheless hurt the process of adaptation and substitution.
For example, there’s already a labor shortage in America. The causes are complicated.
There’s no literal shortage of potential workers, but many workers prefer to stay home because of some combination of government benefits, child-care responsibilities or inadequate pay offered by employers (who can’t afford to pay more themselves because they’ll go out of business).
A lot of this labor shortage centers on lower-wage jobs such as waiters, store clerks, fast-food staff and office assistants. But there will be a labor shortage coming soon in more high-skilled areas such as engineers, pilots, machinists and medical personnel.
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