Wall Street Journal columnist Christopher Mims says the global supply chain has become so cost effective that it can lead to surprising detours. That's the case with cod fish caught in Scotland, which are frozen and sent to China or Southeast Asia to be filleted, and then shipped back to Scotland to be sold.
"It's a journey of many thousands of miles, because transporting that cod is so much cheaper than paying domestic workers to prepare that cod," Mims says.
Mims' new book, Arriving Today, takes a close look at the global supply chain, following a hypothetical USB charger from a Vietnamese factory where it's made to its delivery to a home in Connecticut. That journey traverses 14,000 miles and 12 times zones, and involves a complex network of barges, shipping containers, trucks, warehouses, robots and workers.
Mims calls modern container ships "the most efficient way we've ever invented to move goods." And yet, the global supply chain is not without disruptions — especially during the pandemic. There have been price spikes and shortages of big-ticket items like cars and building materials, as well as products as common as toilet paper and cream cheese. Mims says those issues can frequently be traced back to labor shortages and increased demand.
"Basically, Americans went on a shopping spree as soon as lockdown started, and we haven't really stopped since," he says. "We are ordering so much stuff and we have transferred so much of our spending from services — like hospitality, going on vacations, eating out — to goods that it has really jammed up the works of the global supply chain. It's totally a demand issue."
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