Supply Chain Bottlenecks Will Persist Unless One Of Two Things Happens

Supply Chain Bottlenecks Will Persist Unless One Of Two Things Happens, expert explains

Aarthi Swaminathan·Reporter  Yahoo Finance   Mon, October 4, 2021,

Although businesses may be struggling with unexpected cargo delays, supply chain bottlenecks may not be resolved in the near term.  "I don't see a line of sight where this ends anytime soon," Weston LaBar, head of strategy at Cargomatic, a freight load-matching company, told Yahoo Finance Live (video above). Some experts even expect the supply chain problems to hit the holiday shopping season.

Container ships have been delayed for days at major ports on the West Coast, and trucking routes have been at maximum capacity as a labor shortage plagues the industry.

"One of the big impacts of COVID was the impact of e-commerce and the need for more drivers in the industry, the need for more infrastructure in the form of local delivery centers, to be able to get products to homes, and this continues to impact the supply chain," LaBar explained.

And looking at forecasts through 2022, "I don't think you're going to see much of a dip in or reprieve in these bottlenecks," LaBar added, "until you see either consumer spending habits change or a massive investment in both our infrastructure and our workforce."

Stephen Lamar, president and CEO of the American Apparel & Footwear Association, told Yahoo Finance Live on Friday that the current situation "is a crisis of epic proportion, and it's really just been getting worse."

Due to massive delays at the Los Angeles and Long Beach ports, shipping costs have rapidly risen north, as seen in the chart below by HSBC.

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