New Disruptions, Geopolitics Hang Over 2024 Supply Chains

livemint.com:

Companies that assembled new supply chain strategies in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic are having to put those plans into practice far faster than they may have thought possible. Global supply chains are entering 2024 roiled by disruptions at two of the world’s crucial trade corridors—the Panama Canal and the Suez Canal—even as geopolitical tensions appear set to take a more prominent role in sourcing and distribution.

That could potentially force countries and companies to redraw trade maps that have been built over decades. At the same time, startups and longstanding businesses are establishing the new supply chains behind clean energy, including the operations backing an automotive sector that is a foundation of manufacturing logistics networks.

All of this is buffeting supply chains from semiconductors to consumer goods, pressing companies that sought to bring greater resilience and flexibility into their operations to act in a fast-changing manufacturing and shipping environment. The sudden shocks and shifts will pose a challenge this year to ocean carriers, truckers and other freight and logistics companies that will have to divert resources according to diversions in cargo flows and swings in demand.

Wars in Ukraine and in the Middle East are threatening flows of grain, oil and consumer goods. Climate change and mass migration are disrupting trade lanes from the Panama Canal to the U.S.-Mexico border.

Growing geopolitical tensions are making international supply chains ever more complex. Still, many companies, including big retailers, can point to dramatic success over the past year in clearing out the big stockpiles of inventory that they built up during the pandemic to cope with shipping disruptions and