The Trumpian Roots of the Chip Crisis
What’s the current state of the U.S. economy? A quick summary might be “booming with bottlenecks.”
And some of those bottlenecks reflect the mess created by Donald Trump’s trade policy.
Where we are now: Employment is growing at a rate we haven’t seen since 1984. So, probably, is gross domestic product, although we don’t yet have an official estimate for the second quarter. We are, however, suffering from shortages of many items, which are crimping production in some areas and leading to sharp price increases in others.
Some of these shortages are getting resolved. For example, two months ago, lumber cost almost four times as much as it did before the Covid-19 pandemic; since then, its price has fallen more than 50 percent. Other bottlenecks, however, seem more persistent. World trade is being held back by an inadequate supply of standard-size shipping containers — the ubiquitous boxes that carry almost everything, because they can be lifted directly from the decks of ships onto railroad cars and truck beds — and experts expect the shortage to last at least until late this year.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/08/opinion/trump-trade-chips.html
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What chip shortage? Get the Trump/Walker Foxconn plant on the job.
