| LIFE As I don my carpenters belt this morning...here's a weird supply chain story.

TerryP

Staff
As much as I'd love to sit here and talk about building a wheelchair ramp today here's what brings me to starting this thread.

A family member—not by blood, but one of those relationships built—was involved in an accident about a month ago. She was in the passenger seat of an older Audi (80's model, thankfully not built with plastic) and they were "T-boned" while going through an intersection.

Injuries: Two broken legs, broken arm, broken pelvis, concussion, and shattered rib cage.

Here's where I found her story weird. Her husband told me yesterday her release from the hospital (to the rehab center) was delayed because they didn't have the parts to repair her rib cage. Parts. To repair a rib cage.

Does that sound as odd to you as it did to me when he shared the story yesterday? Imagine your surgeon telling you, "your surgery has been delayed for three days because we're waiting on the parts to come in."

She's doing as okay as one could expect...getting released to outpatient rehab today (hence, building the ramp.) In a stroke of luck, or blessing if you will, her husband happens to be starting his vacation this week. What's crazy here is he put in his request last May for six weeks off—couldn't be better timing, right?
 
Medical supplies have been hit hard because so much is built elsewhere or relies on materials from elsewhere. The US (really the world) is not taking the right lesson from COVID, that we need to ensure we are as self-sufficient on needed goods as possible. Everyone is letting a few countries (mostly China) corner the market on at least a part of everything they need. One shut down of that supplier nation stops everything.
 
Medical supplies have been hit hard because so much is built elsewhere or relies on materials from elsewhere.
This is one of those things that didn't shock me when I heard about the delay, but it never crossed my mind that parts, for surgery, would be delayed because they're not in yet.

Hell, just left ACE and they didn't have any 2½, 3, or 3½" deck screws in stock (T25.) I just forgot them loading tools...but hearing it'll be Saturday, for ACE, sort of shocked me. (Plenty Phillips head.)
 
Medical supplies have been hit hard because so much is built elsewhere or relies on materials from elsewhere. The US (really the world) is not taking the right lesson from COVID, that we need to ensure we are as self-sufficient on needed goods as possible. Everyone is letting a few countries (mostly China) corner the market on at least a part of everything they need. One shut down of that supplier nation stops everything.
In general, it's slowly diversifying away from China, but that also increases the likelihood of smaller supply issues from one of many countries. I do not know where most orthopedic and neuro devices are manufactured. I would've thought the U.S. or Europe, shudder at the thought of getting a Chinese hip.

China is also becoming adept at hiding their products' origin through other countries, such as Vietnam. I expect that will increase.
 
In general, it's slowly diversifying away from China, but that also increases the likelihood of smaller supply issues from one of many countries. I do not know where most orthopedic and neuro devices are manufactured. I would've thought the U.S. or Europe, shudder at the thought of getting a Chinese hip.

China is also becoming adept at hiding their products' origin through other countries, such as Vietnam. I expect that will increase.
Not just a Chinese issue. US law allows you to say something was Assembled in the USA if you got every part from somewhere else and did a substantial portion of the assembly of the final product here. So every single part can be made in China, then just screwed together in the USA.

That's why you see more Assembled in the USA compared to Made in the USA now. Made in the USA requires virtually all of the item be made in the USA.

In other words, US companies are driving this as much as China itself.
 
Hard assets & commodities are the only areas of the market that actually made money for 2022. Not only that but at a range of 18-35% on the year compared to 20-40% losses S&P 500 companies. The price of those goods are going to continue to rise & thus the many of the items that are assembled from down the production line are going to slow down more because the price of those commodities will go up thus restricting what items can be made. And items that are made will be due to the large corporation that are sitting on cash that can afford to buy those items.

As of result, inflation will continue to rise, companies cash strapped will really weaken because of rising interest rates restrict how much money they can borrow thus reducing their ability to make their product due to reduced materials available at a reasonable price.

The global structure of corporations depending on cheap labor in China (that is still not operating at capacity) is starting to see the need to move to different economies to make product. Hopefully, this will drive more labor stateside (we've started to see this happening) but that will take at least a full year to make a dent.

Therefore, the lack of production is going to continue & impact every area of the world/economy.
 
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