Supply Chain Issues

Increasing demand for products in the U.S. has resulted in supply chain problems for many companies. For example, shipping from one Chinese manufacturer, which was 30 days a year and a half ago, is now three months and shipping costs have increased 50 percent. U.S. ports are a major bottleneck and ships can sit offshore for weeks at a time. Overall, global delivery times are the second longest on record. Shortages are the most severe for semiconductors, as demand increased when workers bought electronics to create home offices. In fact, the German Association of the Automotive Industry announced that only 240,000 passenger cars were made in February, about half of the November output. The reason given was the shortage of semiconductors.