In your opinion, what effect will the current supply chain disruption + increasing prices, have on the US economy 6 months, 9 months, 1 year out? Would Trump being President have helped given his broad experience in supply chain issues and his ability to negotiate on behalf of American interests? Is printing money, inflating the money supply, at the root of this chaos?
Not buying imported products save US dollars and hurts THEIR workers and economy not ours. Every dollar not spent on this imported junk is a dollar saved and hopefully spent here in the USA.
Meanwhile they have no qualms about padlocking American entrepreneurs, main street, restaurants - the drivers of economic activity. Surely economic activity suffered from the lock downs as GDP cratered some 35% last year. It gained 30% but when you do that math 30% increase is not the same as 30% decrease. We're still in the hole.
6 months, spotty. 1 year out, assuming no more lockdowns, things should even out on the supply side but there will be a lot of harm for people in the interim. And yes, inflation on just about everything. Maybe some high end merchants can absorb some of the cost and maybe, just maybe, in some categories there will be opportunity for new entrants to come in willing to work on smaller margins than the leaders in the categories today.
One thing that article didn't mention is that the port workers unions, the checkers etc, are doing the same thing the teachers are doing - exploiting the pandemic to extract concessions. They are working at half capacity, keeping social distance etc and demanding concessions before full 100% resumption of work to resume.