Supply chains are under plenty of stress, but they’re not breaking. Here’s why

Global supply chains, now a couple years recovered from pandemic-era snarls, have been chugging along at a much healthier clip.

Global supply chains, now a couple years recovered from pandemic-era snarls, have been chugging along at a much healthier clip. But by no means has it been smooth sailing. Traffic through two critical international shipping arteries has been bogged down dramatically: The Suez Canal, due to Houthi militants’ monthslong attacks on vessels; and the Panama Canal, due to a historic drought. In addition to the brewing uncertainty from ongoing wars and geopolitical strife, other perils have popped up like a game of Whac-A-Mole: The Key Bridge’s devastating and deadly collapse that closed the Port of Baltimore for two months; a Canadian rail labor dispute that temporarily brought trains to a standstill and still remains unsettled; and a looming September 30 contract expiration that, if not extended, could send dockworkers on the East and Gulf coasts to the picket lines. The emerging threats, lengthier shipping routes or spiking container costs might stoke concerns of another 2021-style supply chain breakdown that disrupted businesses globally and helped to ignite decades-high inflation. But economists and shipping experts say this time it’s different — in good part because of what happened three years ago. “The upside of the havoc wrought by supply chain disruption in recent years is that global supply chains today are far more resilient than they were even a decade ago,” Tim Quinlan, managing director and senior economist at Wells Fargo, told CNN. “The combination of onshoring and nearshoring play a big role but so too does this diversification of suppliers.”