Pops wrote:theluckycountry wrote:And what are seeing? A breakdown of the complex international shipping system and of the national shipping system.
No, what we're seeing is a massive increase in consumption as people stayed home and shopped with government checks.
26,000,000 containers arrived in the US last year, an 18% increase over 2020 & 2019
China is building double the new containers, 6,000,000—that is not the sign of collapse.
It isn't anything like a breakdown, it is exactly the opposite.
It's the same with the chip "shortage" it isn't falling it just isn't keeping up with demand. Auto makers killed all of their orders early in the pandemic and we're surprised with how little demand fell, again as people sit home and buy stuff.
The problem with JIT is its inflexibility and we're seeing and paying for it big time. But don't mistake this for some great cascading societal collapse... that comes later. LOL
I don't see this as an either this or that situation. You are both correct. We are seeing both transportation, storage, distribution, and other problems, caused by the pandemic, trade wars, and countermeasures, and also a major increase in international trade. Chinese international trade volumes increased more than 20% last year, year on year, and China is the largest trading nation in the whole world. We are experiencing both an increase in international trade and very serious disruptions to it at the same time.
Pops is correct in his observation about car manufacturers and chips, but the semiconductors problem is much bigger than that. There is a chip war going on. The USA started it to try to weaken China. That was a moronic move. It won't work. The Chinese are investing a fortune on this now. This week the Russians and the Chinese started talking about increasing strategic cooperation in creating an independent, self sufficient, semiconductor manufacturing supply chain. This will become part of their strategic cooperation on aviation, military, and space. The Chinese have been rumored for a few years to be developing a domestic alternative to EUV lithography to manufacture chips, though I haven't seen any evidence of this yet.
I believe the Chinese government may be disrupting trade with the USA and some other Western nations, particularly sea shipping, on purpose to increase costs for their consumers, raise US prices to increase inflation, and encourage the US government to get rid of tariffs and other trade sanctions. Trade by rail in Eurasia hasn't been disrupted the same way, particularly with BRI countries. Chinese trade with BRI nations grew dramatically last year, but some countries, particularly the USA and Australia, are being punished by the Chinese for their aggressive foreign policies towards China. I expect this to continue after the pandemic is over. China is focused on developing its domestic market and trading more with, and investing more in, BRI nations, Asia, Africa, and Latin America. China is making itself less sensitive to US sanctions.