And a couple reasons to worry that it won’t end anytime soon
Can the crisis be contained? Photo: Apu Gomes/AFP via Getty Images Overstretched supply chains have been the bane of the Biden economy. This year, the United States has enjoyed one of the fastest post-recession job recoveries in history, a long-awaited spike in business investment, rising wages, falling child poverty, and record household wealth. But shortages have caused rising prices, which have eroded the real value of Americans’ paychecks.
One way to resolve this mismatch would be to reduce demand, which is to say, to pursue policies that lower the amount of money that Americans have to spend on stuff . That route would ease inflation at the cost of slower economic growth and higher poverty. The potential for the holiday season to turbocharge the global supply-demand mismatch, as households across the Christian world simultaneously increase their goods spending, has long worried analysts. But America’s big-box stores saw this crunch coming from nautical miles away, and they’ve been steadily building up inventory in anticipation. Last week, Walmart, Home Depot, and Target all told investors that they’re fully stocked for the holidays.
But in recent weeks, as the government has empowered coal-fired plants to charge higher prices, the electricity crunch has eased and manufacturing has returned to something resembling normal capacity.Earlier this year, COVID-19 outbreaks in Malaysia and Vietnam forced authorities to limit production. That took a toll on the global supply of textiles and semiconductors. But output at factories in Southeast Asia rebounded over the past month, as case counts fell and normal production resumed.
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