No Quick Fix for Shipping Crisis Creating Supply Chain Bottlenecks

WASHINGTON - A significant spike in demand for consumer goods in the United States and Europe, combined with disruptions caused by the coronavirus pandemic, has roiled global shipping markets, driving up the cost of moving containers of goods in the U.S. and globally.

That has resulted in rising prices and enormous delays at ports and logistics hubs, severely damaging supply chains around the world. In some cases, the backups are having noticeable effects on day-to-day life. This week, supply shortages in Britain caused McDonald’s restaurants to pull milkshakes and some bottled drinks off their menus and forced the Nando’s chain of chicken restaurants to temporarily close 50 stores. In the United States, it is now routine to see dozens of enormous container ships waiting outside major ports in California because of backups, while inland logistics hubs overflow with containers that have yet to be loaded onto trucks for shipment to their final destinations. Rotterdam, Europe’s largest port, has battled problems with congestion this summer, as have ports in Britain. A report released this week by financial services giant Citigroup and the Economist Intelligence Unit suggests the problems have deep roots and are unlikely to go away soon. “Shifts in supply chains already were under way, owing to geopolitical and economic factors, and COVID-19 has accelerated some of them,” the report found. “Recent outbreaks of the virus — driven by the delta variant — mean that we have not seen the last of supply-chain disruptions yet, as economic activity across Asia-Pacific continues to be hampered.” Complex set of problems