What a difference a year makes. The U.S. inflation rate was at 1.4 percent when Joe Biden was sworn in as President in January 2021. In just fifteen months, it has since risen rapidly to a 40-year high of 8.5 percent, the result of global supply chain issues. Many hoped that those issues would resolve themselves as the pandemic eased. But hopes that inflation would prove transitory have been dashed by current events in Ukraine and Shanghai—events which prove not only that the supply chain crisis is ongoing, but that it spells the end of most global supply chains as we know them. Putin’s invasion of Ukraine sparked geopolitical tensions unseen since 1989. Russia’s aggression—and the West’s anti-Russia sanctions—have shattered key foundations of global supply chains built after the fall of the Berlin Wall 30 years ago. A growing number of multinational companies can no longer afford to separate business and geopolitics, and they are under pressure to stop importing from, exporting to, and operating in Russia and its allies.
Read more : It’s the End of the Global Supply Chain as We Know It.
