The supply chain mess was a foreseeable disaster
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Illustration: Peter and Maria Hoey
 
Dear reader,
In 2015, the Federal Maritime Commission created a document that probably sat on a shelf collecting dust for many years. It described a future at our nation’s ports with clogged terminals, idling trucks, unavailable chassis and containers, and mass congestion. It said that future would become reality if events at the ports were allowed to continue unfixed.

Seven years later, we’re living that reality. And it was a known inevitability. The ports sit in the middle of a tangled nest of unwise policy choices made over the past half-century, dealing with the consequences despite a disastrous lack of investment and manpower to handle the ever-burgeoning flood of cargo.

Prospect staff writer Alex Sammon unearthed this 2015 document that was a blueprint to the chaos at the ports that is driving the supply chain crisis. We knew the problems years ago but failed to act. It’s a terrific piece that helps explain how bad policy caused shortages and raised prices.

You can read Alex’s story here.  
You can read all the stories in our special issue, How We Broke the Supply Chain, as they are released, at
prospect.org/supplychain
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Sincerely,
David Dayen, Executive Editor
The American Prospect
 
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