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Coronavirus has disrupted supply chains for nearly 75% of U.S. companies

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Re: Coronavirus has disrupted supply chains for nearly 75% of U.S. companies

#41

Post by AgloeDreams »

throwaway_Bees wrote: post #15
bdcravens wrote: post #7

I had a phone stolen a couple of weeks ago, and initially I was trying to buy a new phone outright (ended up filing a claim and having my new one overnighted, but lack of SMS access would have prevented me from doing my job, hence the urgency). None of the local Verizon stores had any phones (11 Pro Max) in stock (they explicitly said it was due to China supply chain), but Best Buy did.

>None of the local Verizon stores had any phones (11 Pro Max) in stock (they explicitly said it was due to China supply chain) That may be true...but it may be just as likely they are minimizing their own inventory to keep their own costs down/cash on hand, which is not something they would freely tell their own employees or customers.

Apple has already stated in their disclosures that they expect serve impact on their iPhone sales due to supply constraints.

Re: Coronavirus has disrupted supply chains for nearly 75% of U.S. companies

#42

Post by taiwanboy »

core-questions wrote: post #22
dumbfoundded wrote: post #18

This has happened to my company and a few others I know. We have about $15K of packaging stuck in China. If this is doing anything (to me personally), it's making me reconsider shifting more of the supply-chain to the US. In many cases, the prices aren't really that different.

This is a net good effect in terms of resiliency, in the long term, and may also result in moving some manufacturing jobs back to the US. As the standard of living rises in China, labour costs will increase until eventually the only way it will really be cheaper to do things over there is because of either better logistics, or lax environmental/labour laws that enable shortcuts we can't/won't take here. The latter is…

Mexico wages are already lower than wages in China. In fact, chinalawblog.com talks a lot about companies shifting to Mexico due to USMCA and short turnaround for supply chain.

https://www.chinalawblog.com/2020/03/international-manufactu...

Re: Coronavirus has disrupted supply chains for nearly 75% of U.S. companies

#43

Post by smbullet »

octonion wrote: post #35
hardtokill wrote: post #25

We really need to get our factories out of China. This is a country that hid the coronavirus case for 2-3 weeks, let 5 million Wuhan residents leave the city, doctored numbers, then most recently had government press try to spin the disease as if it didn’t come out of Wuhan, but rather somewhere other countries!! And they are actively Forcing uigher population into crippled factories in eastern China to replace migra…

The US is literally doing the exact same thing right now.

Source?

Re: Coronavirus has disrupted supply chains for nearly 75% of U.S. companies

#44

Post by klhutchins »

partiallypro wrote: post #14
b34r wrote: post #8

I hope it doesn’t screw up our food supply too much. We get a surprising amount of crops from China and the rest of the world.

I'm not concerned about the food supply, I am a bit concerned about logistical problems of getting food to grocers if we have massive infection rates. This would hopefully be short lived though, as workers out could be back at work within 2-3 weeks. We'd just have to hope they don't all get it at once. I hope grocers are taking measures to prevent vendors from interacting with each other, and making sure their loadin…

That brings up the question, Should we be cleaning products/ food brought home? I mean, normally I will wash produce but what about everything else?

Re: Coronavirus has disrupted supply chains for nearly 75% of U.S. companies

#45

Post by tunesmith »

octonion wrote: post #35
hardtokill wrote: post #25

We really need to get our factories out of China. This is a country that hid the coronavirus case for 2-3 weeks, let 5 million Wuhan residents leave the city, doctored numbers, then most recently had government press try to spin the disease as if it didn’t come out of Wuhan, but rather somewhere other countries!! And they are actively Forcing uigher population into crippled factories in eastern China to replace migra…

The US is literally doing the exact same thing right now.

I'd really like to start seeing less of this sort of comment on Hacker News. It's not even close to literally true.

Re: Coronavirus has disrupted supply chains for nearly 75% of U.S. companies

#46

Post by lutorm »

core-questions wrote: post #22
dumbfoundded wrote: post #18

This has happened to my company and a few others I know. We have about $15K of packaging stuck in China. If this is doing anything (to me personally), it's making me reconsider shifting more of the supply-chain to the US. In many cases, the prices aren't really that different.

This is a net good effect in terms of resiliency, in the long term, and may also result in moving some manufacturing jobs back to the US. As the standard of living rises in China, labour costs will increase until eventually the only way it will really be cheaper to do things over there is because of either better logistics, or lax environmental/labour laws that enable shortcuts we can't/won't take here. The latter is…

This is a net good effect in terms of resiliency, in the long term...

Well, this is the problem, right. Resiliency only pays off when there's a crisis, otherwise it's a net cost. So if you're outcompeted by the other non-resilient companies before that crisis happens, it doesn't help.

I feel like societal resiliency needs to be rewarded (in many contexts, utilities are obvious but also food supply, etc) but I don't know what a good way of doing this would be, except making it government run and making resiliency a primary objective. I don't see how a for-profit system that rewards short-term gains could ever be made to value resiliency.

Re: Coronavirus has disrupted supply chains for nearly 75% of U.S. companies

#47

Post by theandrewbailey »

pogbatea wrote: post #24
hardtokill wrote: post #16

We really need to get our factories out of China. This is a country that hid the coronavirus case for 2-3 weeks, let 5 million Wuhan residents leave the city, doctored numbers, then most recently had government press try to spin the disease as if it didn’t come out of Wuhan, but rather somewhere other countries!! And they are actively funneling uigher population into crippled factories in eastern China to replace mig…

Oh yes, make american great again.

China is a major exporter to a lot of countries, so the same sentiment applies to them, too. More like, make the world great again.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_the_largest_trading_pa...

Re: Coronavirus has disrupted supply chains for nearly 75% of U.S. companies

#48

Post by neaden »

barbecue_sauce wrote: post #33
youngprogrammer wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anecdote: Our caterer in silicon valley said there was a supply issue for tofu.

So I guess they import the beans, manufacture the tofu, then ship it back to us? Sounds inefficient, though I'm not sure how much demand there is for a large-scale domestic tofu manufacturing industry in the US.

US Tofu is by and large for animal feed or oil, not tofu.

Re: Coronavirus has disrupted supply chains for nearly 75% of U.S. companies

#49

Post by cycop »

b34r wrote: post #8

I hope it doesn’t screw up our food supply too much. We get a surprising amount of crops from China and the rest of the world.

It is not the food that is the problem , it is the packaging. A large percentage of packaging products are made in China, so a producer may have the food here , but packaging will have to adapt with low to no supplies from China.

Re: Coronavirus has disrupted supply chains for nearly 75% of U.S. companies

#50

Post by tome »

dumbfoundded wrote: post #18

This has happened to my company and a few others I know. We have about $15K of packaging stuck in China. If this is doing anything (to me personally), it's making me reconsider shifting more of the supply-chain to the US. In many cases, the prices aren't really that different.

> it's making me reconsider shifting more of the supply-chain to the US. In many cases, the prices aren't really that different.

If the prices weren't really that different then why did those parts of the supply chain go to China in the first place?

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