Even after a weak patch, America’s economy is still in high gear

MANAGERS AT HUB GROUP, a transport company, used to be able to click a few buttons at their headquarters in Illinois and, eight weeks later, receive a new shipping container from China, ready for use in America. Recently, though, Phillip Yeager, the firm’s president, faced a headache. After a long wait at the congested port of Long Beach, its container was at last next in line to go ashore. But the ship in front did not have a chassis for moving its freight and was blocking the landing berth. Mr Yeager’s team scrambled to find a chassis for it. Only then could Hub get its container, a full month late.Multiply by thousands of containers, and the tale helps explain how supply chains have become so snarled, particularly in America, the world’s biggest consumer market. And this is just one of the cross-cutting forces buffeting the economy. Demand for goods is incredibly strong, but companies are struggling to find workers and supplies, which in turn is pushing up wages and prices, all against a backdrop in which the pandemic—the original cause of the distortions—is fading but not gone. And officials, poised to withdraw the extraordinary fiscal and monetary stimulus of the past 18 months, are throwing another element into the fray. At the end of its policy meeting on November 3rd, the Federal Reserve said that it would start paring back its $120bn monthly bond-buying programme, putting it on track to halt all purchases by June next year.