Headlines about the depth and staying power of the current crisis in global supply chains and logistics are hard to miss. The overwhelming majority of their accompanying stories are predicated on the notion that the tumult has been driven largely by COVID.
Indeed, it has become received wisdom that the pandemic was the progenitor of the observed distortions in accessibility to, and cost of, cargo containers; the astronomical rise in shipping rates; the clogging of ports; the shortage of wooden pallets; the dearth of truck drivers; and the constraints on warehousing capacity. In fact, COVID, itself, has played a much smaller role in giving rise to these developments than most observers suggest or even assert.
