There are subreddits discussing the supply chain issues and the resultant shortages. People working in the supply chain confirm it's a real thing. We're seeing a cascade event caused in large part by most companies having offshored their manufacturing to China. It's the classic "don't put all your eggs in one basket" screwup. When employees at a company in China test positive for covid, the company is shut down. That, of course, causes delays in manufacturing. Same thing happens at their ports - if there's an outbreak, the port shuts down. Add to that China's current energy crisis, which has the gov't ordering manufacturing plants to shut down between 1-3 days a week. That adds yet again to the backlog.
Same thing is happening in other nations, such as Vietnam, where a significant percentage of clothing is made.
On our end, we have a shortage of trucks, truckers, and longshoremen. As a result, the ships are stacking up outside the ports, and the ports are filling up with containers that haven't been picked up by the companies yet, because they can't get trucks or drivers. Once the storage space in the port fills up, the port has to stop unloading ships.
In the US, another major contributing factor is our deteriorating infrastructure. Instead of raising taxes to keep our ports, highways, airports, and railroads in good shape and up to date, we've chosen to let them age out and deteriorate. US ports have barely any automation, so it takes a whole lot longer to unload the ships. In the time an automated European port would unload 100 containers, the US ports will unload only six. Our antiquated infrastructure can't keep up with the demands placed on it, so things are backing up.
Then there's the container shortage. Since it's taking forever for the ships to get unloaded, and they're thus behind schedule to pick up the next shipment overseas, they can't wait around for empty containers to be loaded to return to the overseas ports. So China hasn't got enough containers to meet demand. Plus their ports are backed up with material waiting to shipped, except that the ships are still circling the Western ports waiting to be unloading.
It's just a global clusterfuck.
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