“The Mother of All Supply Shortages is Coming”! Headline. China to blame according to Bloomberg. The story is making its waves thru liberal & conservative channels with the threat source – Bloomberg. But the story is faulted and bears a closer look at exactly who is responsible and why.
“China Finds Omicron in Another Port City Further Threatening Supply Chains” ~ Boston Globe. That would be 1 case. Yes. One case of Omicron In a city of 7 million.
In 2021, China posted it’s largest trade with the US in history! According to trade data from China, the bulk of that rise was a direct result of Pandemic supplies. While the US was beleaguered by shipping container shortages, trucking mandates, port closures, and supply shortages in 2021, China was making huge profits. If in fact China is and was responsible, then their trade profits would reflect those delays and shortages as well. That didn’t happen. Why?
China is expecting slower growth for 2022 – as a direct result of the disappearance of the Pandemic and related supplies all made in China. Including those N-95 masks now required by the CDC.
And while the Biden Handlers, which likely includes Mr Mikey Bloomberg, are doing everything in their power to destroy the US economy, China is busily making trade friends with the Middle East and now India. As in, ‘keep your friends close, but your enemies closer’. China recognizes nationalism within a bloc of trade partners is key to growth – and survival.
Note: Bloomberg has offices in both Beijing and Shanghai. Having radically expanded in China over the last decade, they offer Chinese language professional services and subscriber news. Self Citing: “Bloomberg is the most trusted source of information for professionals and businesses”. A) Trusted – not accurate or factual, but trusted. B) Trusted. Prove it.
Supply Shortages are created by the country having the shortage, ie, US, Australia, Canada, and EU.
The shortages in nearly every industry are due to exactly one cause: vaccine mandates. Lift the mandates – no more shortages. Biden’s private mandate was struck down but some suppliers continue to mandate their workers privately. Workers leave for greener pastures, and suppliers blame China.
The ‘Greater Demand’ explanation that the US kept pandering as the cause of supply shortages was a fabricated lie. There was only ONE greater demand, Pandemic supplies. Therefore, ships were prioritized according to their load – everything Pandemic docked, everything else languished.
China’s zero CoVid mandate continues to disrupt cities, partial city lockdowns are instituted when a CoVid case is diagnosed. Yet headlines continue to make ‘assertions’ instead of relaying ‘facts’: port at risk – congestion – may cause – could result in – could cause blow. The headlines play word games once reviled by manufacturers marketing techniques: 20% better – better than what?
When searching these supply shortage headlines they all have two specific dates attached – August 2021, and January 2022. Nothing in-between. The point? Fear mongering in order to destabilize and support panic. If China’s ports were shuttered extensively in August 2021, why did China post largest trade surplus ever over 20% for the year?
Yet, there is one headline that would have some truth behind it although the cause is fiction:
“Major Manufacturers Are Shutting Factories”. I did find one – Canon. The reason they have given is because no one is buying old school cameras any longer. But the Newswire that supplies the same story across the entire grid of media claims Nike, Adidas, Volkswagen, and Samsung ‘suffer massive production problems’. So I tested that claim and found this useful truism:
“In 2019 Samsung had ceased to make mobile phones in China, the company revealed on Wednesday. The company has been withdrawing from handset manufacturing in the country for a while now as its position in the Chinese market is not strong, whereas business conditions are better elsewhere.
Samsung used to run multiple phone manufacturing facilities in China. About a year ago, the company shut down its plant in Tianjin, then it closed its plant in Huizhou in mid-2019. Recently, the world’s No. 1 maker of smartphones ceased production of handsets in another factory in Huizhou. Equipment used at its facilities in China was relocated to plants in other countries, such as India and Vietnam.”
Samsung doesn’t exist in China any longer having pulled out over 2 years ago! SO yes – that would be a ‘production problem’ I suppose.
Adidas & Nike ‘production problems’ were actually boycott problems reported by Bloomberg in 2021 extensively. “A boycott by mainland Chinese consumers of international brands that have taken a stand against the treatment of Muslim Uyghurs in the Xinjiang region has taken a toll on Adidas and Nike brands.”
Lastly, the empty shelves posted from one grocery store in Canada had absolutely NOTHING to do with a supply shortage. Canada had a monster snow storm approaching and the trucking union pulled all truckers from the roads until they could be cleared. End of Story.
Jumping on the Bandwagon of these fake stories that promote a flawed if not corrupted picture of reality does no one any good at all. Including the media. It is true there is a shortage of truck drivers, exasperated by vaccine mandates. But that shortage has existed for over a decade and did not shutter our economy.
What IS shuttering our economy is manipulated data, manipulated news, manipulated Pandemic fears, and manipulated container shortages. The cost of shipping across all means is expected to continue to rise in 2022, not because of supply and demand – but because of inflation and forced wage hikes.
This is why researching instead of simply glomming onto Headlines is imperative!