We must reverse the policies that caused the mess
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Illustration: Peter and Maria Hoey
 
Dear reader,
For decades, bad policy choices created a supply chain that is vulnerable to shocks and unable to adjust. It enabled behemoth logistics companies that are more invested in profiting from chaos than solving problems. And anything—not just a pandemic, but extreme weather events, freak accidents, or political unrest—can trigger these disruptions all over again.

So what can we do about it? We can reverse the policies that broke the supply chain in the first place. In our final story from our special issue, I wrote about what it would take to re-engineer our supply chains into a coherent national logistics system, regulating and coordinating what has been privatized.

That means reshoring critical industries to make commerce more resilient and sustainable. It means ending just-in-time logistics and moving to just-in-case. It means breaking the power of large companies, and re-regulating key hubs of the supply chain like ocean shipping, trucking, and rail. It means repudiating the notion that the goal of all business is to increase profits, and turning to a stakeholder model that emphasizes workers and communities, and strengthens our prosperity and security.

It’s a heavy lift, but the Biden administration has put some of these ideas into practice. And they’ve had help from businesses that are finally rethinking the mindset that caused the supply chain meltdown.
You can read my story on supply chain solutions here.
You can read our entire special issue at
prospect.org/supplychain
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Thank you for your consideration.

Sincerely,
David Dayen, Executive Editor
The American Prospect
 
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