The White House said in a blog post Wednesday that it will update Americans twice a month on the health of the U.S. supply chain at the port of Los Angeles and Long Beach, California, which together handle about 40% of the nation’s containerized imports.
Normally, there are only a “few” container ships waiting to dock outside those two cities, the administration said. On Friday, there were 75. Still, Biden’s Supply Chain Disruptions Task Force said it expects unprecedented demand for goods to decline and spending on services to rise in the coming months.
“We are already seeing that with spending on goods in September well below its April 2021 peak, but we still have a ways to go,” the task force wrote. “In the meantime, our supply chains are moving record volumes of goods – and being asked to continue to do so.”
The White House did not immediately respond to CNBC’s request for comment on Lummis’ letter.
The problems have been so severe that many Americans are doing their holiday shopping earlier than usual an in effort to avoid any last-minute delays. In a recent note, Bank of America’s chief U.S. economist, Michelle Meyer, joked to clients that Christmas arrived in September this year.
“Retailers have been urging shoppers to begin shopping for the holidays early this year given concerns over low inventory, shipping delays and an-already large backlog of orders,” Meyer wrote on Sept. 30. The risk there, she added, is that “the shopping season ends up being pulled forward, leaving less activity at the end of November and December.”
The mismatch between demand and supply has also fueled inflation, or the rate at which prices increase, to multidecade highs.
Core PCE inflation — the Federal Reserve’s preferred gauge of price growth — jumped 3.6% in September on a year-over-year basis, its fastest pace since 1991.
Article source: https://www.cnbc.com/2021/11/03/supply-chain-crisis-gop-sen-lummis-tells-biden-to-ditch-covid-vaccine-mandate.html