guest COMMENTARY

The hidden blessings of the supply chain crisis

The Chinese character for crisis also means opportunity. There are several blessings hidden amid the current supply chain crisis. Exposing Chinese Dependence

You’ve likely heard about the dozens of ships lined up just outside the ports of Long Beach and Los Angeles. These ships and the millions of containers they are waiting to offload are filled with toys, electronics, textiles, automobiles, appliances, building supplies, tools, pet food, batteries, solar panels, car parts, microchips, and on and on and on, almost all made in China.

Our decades-long offshoring of manufacturing has made us dependent on a foreign adversary. Our annual trade imbalance with China regularly exceeds $70B.

We are overly dependent on China for many of the things that we consume.

We should use this “opportunity” to re-evaluate our purchases. Do we need all this stuff? If so, can we not look to domestic alternatives and use this crisis to bring manufacturing home?

Let’s use this season to resist buying more (and more) Chinese crap. Shop local, support your local mom and pop, and look for the Made in USA label.

Government Incompetence

The “crisis” has also exposed the incompetence of Gavin Newsom, Joe Biden, Pete Buttigieg, and a myriad of government bureaucrats.

A plethora of government busybodies have damaged our market system. While they will blame “the market,” or suggest that this crisis is a success, it is abundantly clear that elections have consequences.

Some segment of the electorate may have chafed at President Trump’s mean tweets or his braggadocio, but at least things worked during his tenure.

It is my hope that the people see this crisis for what it is: a foreshadowing of life in America under communism. Government doesn’t need to take over the means of production if it can effectively take over the corporations that control the workforce or the means of production. Vaccine mandates have dictated the winners and losers in our economy. Leftist corporations are proceeding with abandon in the wholesale destruction of millions of wage-earners. No doubt, these plebes will be given some menial tasks to perform — possibly the construction of their own gulags.

President Trump would remedy the above two scenarios in a New York minute. He would overturn Lesko Brandon’s unconstitutional vaccine mandate, incentivize production at home, and create opportunity zones for Americans to onshore the manufacturing of more of the things that Americans consume. He would also expose and clear out the vast incompetence deeply rooted in government bureaucracies from Washington, D.C., to San Francisco Bay.