How We Broke the Supply Chain

Headnote

Rampant outsourcing, financialization, monopolization, deregulation, and just-intime logistics are the culprits.

This article appears in The American Prospect magazine's February 2022 special issue. "How We Broke the Supply Chain." Subscribe here.

Anyone old enough to remember the Cold War is familiar with a scene routinely depicted on U.S. television at the time: the Soviet breadline. Warning Americans about life under communism, these clips showed Russian citizens lingering forlornly outside businesses for hours to obtain basic goods-indelible proof of the inferiority of central planning, and an advertisement for capitalism's abundance.

Breadlines, the Big Book of Capitalism assured us, could not happen in a market economy. Supply would always rise to meet demand, as long as there's money to be made. Only deviating from free-market fundamentalism-giving everyone health care, for example-could lead to shortages. Otherwise, capitalism has your every desire covered.

Yet we have breadlines in America today, or at least just off our coasts. They consist of dozens of ships with billions of dollars of cargo, idling outside the Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, the docks through which 40 percent of all U.S. seaborne imports flow. "Ships" barely conveys the scale of these giants, which are more like floating Empire State Buildings, stacked high with multicolored containers filled to the brim with toys and clothes and electronics, produced mostly in Asia.

Shortages and price hikes were brought to life through bad public policy coupled with decades of corporate greed.

The lines don't end there, with worn-down physical infrastructure and the lack of a well-compensated, stable labor force impeding cargo from getting unloaded at the yards, transferred to trucks or railcars, stored in warehouses, and transported to shops or mailboxes across America. As a direct result, for the first time in most of our lifetimes (provided we didn't live in the former Soviet Union), we're experiencing random shortages.

One day you can't find bicycle parts; the next day it's luxury watches or L.O.L. dolls: then it's cream cheese in New York City. You might walk into a Burger King and see a sign that says "Sorry, no french fries with any order. We have no potatoes." Or the fries will be soggy, because there's not enough cooking oil. Common lab materials like pipette tips...