Who wields the power in the world’s supply chains?

SUPPLY-CHAIN managers cannot seem to catch a break. Consider the past month alone. A collapsed bridge has walled off the Port of Baltimore, one of the biggest on America’s east coast, until at least late May. A big earthquake in Taiwan, where a large share of microchips are made, has rattled an industry that increasingly underpins a lot of the world’s manufacturing. Houthi rebels in Yemen keep lobbing missiles at ships in the Red Sea, a critical passage for seaborne trade. America and China are still at loggerheads over their mutual economic entanglements. Wars still rack Ukraine and Gaza.These disruptions pale next to the snarl-ups of the covid-19 pandemic. But each is a reminder of the business lesson of that period: it is better to be safe than sorry. Politicians regularly hector companies to make their supply chains less “just in time” and more “just in case”. Corporate bosses often nod along, vowing to make their supplier networks shockproof.