will supply chains ever return to "normal"?

[electruck]

9-12 months for Acura dealership to get collision repair parts....

https://www.fox4news.com/news/on-your-side-waiting-for-repairs

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[crashmtb]

No.

all this “unprecedented” stuff is plenty precedented by now.

 

[Donald Stanfield]

There is a cascading effect at play here. It's not just the pandemic, mostly not the pandemic actually. It's the free money that was given out during the pandemic. It's important to realize that income or stocks or whatever other financial metric you want isn't the real controller for inflation, the real thing that controls inflation is the availability of goods and services.

With the free money it created artificial demands which drove up prices, especially on smaller consumer goods. Then manufacturers boosted production on these goods to try and respond to the increased demand. Now demand is down and they have a surplus of these things but a smaller amount of other things like repair parts and whatnot.

It rippled through lots of industries as production shifted from one thing to another. Plus there was a huge push to make more ventilators and masks and medical supplies so lots of places pushed production of other things to this sort of stuff during the pandemic creating more supply shortages. It's just going to take a while before it ripples through all industries.

Complicated things show these shortages the most because something like a car takes parts from tons of different industries from metal works to textiles to computer chips to glass. A snag in any one of these supply chains and you're going to have delays. Unfortunately when we have one chain get better and bounce back we might still have another industry that's seeing their production need to catch up. So it appears to the end user like one incident that's never going to resolve but the reality is it's lots of simple little things happening one after another causing delays.

 

[Zybane]

This is what happens when you sell your soul (the West) to an enemy (China) in the name of profits.

 

[Ladiver]

I agree with @crashmtb, the supply chain will forever be screwed. There is no incentive for manufacturers to change. They just raise prices and blame the supply chain issues. The whole JIT (just in time) model got us into the situation. Now, it is the raw material suppliers that are practicing JIT.

My other theory is political but has the same result of the supply chain not getting any better.

 

[crashmtb]

I agree with @crashmtb, the supply chain will forever be screwed. There is no incentive for manufacturers to change. They just raise prices and blame the supply chain issues. The whole JIT (just in time) model got us into the situation. Now, it is the raw material suppliers that are practicing JIT.

My other theory is political but has the same result of the supply chain not getting any better.

Indeed the big problem currently is that (mostly) huge corporations have figured out they can just charge whatever they want, make record profits, and call it “inflation” with a shrug. Better to crank margins up, and keep on creating maximum shareholder benefit(can’t go backwards from record breaking profitable years after all) before real scarcity kicks in. By which time the consumer will be more acclimated to ever increasing prices.

 

[crashmtb]

This is what happens when you sell your soul (the West) to an enemy (China) in the name of profits.

Nah. Would’ve got here without offshoring. Industriall revolution robber barons would be jealous of today.

 

[iansriv]

This is what happens when you sell your soul (the West) to an enemy (China) in the name of profits.

Why can't we bring the critical mfg back? I go out of my way to buy American as much as I can. That was a big reason for looking at a R1 in the first place.

 

[Dark-Fx]

Why can't we bring the critical mfg back? I go out of my way to buy American as much as I can. That was a big reason for looking at a R1 in the first place.

Rivian has quite a few parts of the suspension from China.

 

[EVTrucking]

This is what happens when you sell your soul (the West) to an enemy (China) in the name of profits.

We(USA)handed China the keys to the Kingdom for pennies on the dollar! The greedy bastards that did it are rich and will never be held accountable.

Supply chain issues will continue with a lot worse to come.

 

[virgnia_rivian]

Why can't we bring the critical mfg back? I go out of my way to buy American as much as I can. That was a big reason for looking at a R1 in the first place.

Building more domestic manufacturing is a good idea, but there are hurdles. 1) We don't have the cheap labor force that exists overseas. This is one of the biggest drivers for large corporations to offshore this production. 2) Goods produced here will cost more. This is fine for some consumers, but most consumers look for rock bottom prices. 3) We don't have enough workers to fill all of the jobs. 4) Materials are sourced globally.

I'm not saying manufacturing can't come back to the U.S., I'm just saying there are many supply and economic challenges.

The supply chain constraints are a plethora of complexities. I think the pandemic has taught us we need to be more self reliant (similar to what we did with foreign oil).

 

[EVTrucking]

Building more domestic manufacturing is a good idea, but there are hurdles. 1) We don't have the cheap labor force that exists overseas. This is one of the biggest drivers for large corporations to offshore this production. 2) Goods produced here will cost more. This is fine for some consumers, but most consumers look for rock bottom prices. 3) We don't have enough workers to fill all of the jobs. 4) Materials are sourced globally.

I'm not saying manufacturing can't come back to the U.S., I'm just saying there are many supply and economic challenges.

The supply chain constraints are a plethora of complexities. I think the pandemic has taught us we need to be more self reliant (similar to what we did with foreign oil).

I agree with most of your points but IMO use of cheap labor can creat a new consumption market. China is a great example. They took a huge low income population and turned it into a huge market where the real money is to be made.

 

[sub]

The greedy bastards that did it are rich and will never be held accountable.

Does anyone else think it's funny to see rich people being offended that other people would have the gall to also want to be rich.

I'm not defending anyone's behavior, I just think this is not a group (myself included) that is qualified to complain about others being/getting rich. Complain about the behavior all you want, but we shouldn't complain about wealth when we are spending more than 10x the global median net worth on a car

 

[Gator42]

Why can't we bring the critical mfg back? I go out of my way to buy American as much as I can. That was a big reason for looking at a R1 in the first place.

The push overseas was largely cost driven but also a response to labor demands and work rules. Remember the 'jobs bank' UAW pushed? That was crippling...

 

[EVTrucking]

Does anyone else think it's funny to see rich people being offended that other people would have the gall to also want to be rich.

I'm not defending anyone's behavior, I just think this is not a group (myself included) that is qualified to complain about others being/getting rich. Complain about the behavior all you want, but we shouldn't complain about wealth when we are spending more than 10x the global median net worth on a car

I am not jealous of rich people getting richer.

Do you not see the bigger picture here? To so call resolve cost issues here in the USA, we gave China (a country that makes no secret of wanting to rule the world including the USA!) money and technology to not resolve high labor costs but to create a huge market (totally greed driven with no regard to the consequences) in the process China now has us by the short hairs. They can and do control the flow of goods we no longer produce and that includes semiconductors. The danger from China goes much deeper than continued supply chain issues.

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