Unfortunately for many industries those issues are about to increase:
"Eighty percent of trade between the US and Canada is transited by truck. America exports about 90% of Canada's fruits and vegetables during the winter season. As shipments decline because only about half of US truck drivers are vaccinated, grocery stores report shortages."
Shortages and supply interruptions are causing more of the same problem much like traffic on the freeway goes into dysfunction once there's an incident that blocks free flow. Most, if not all of these problems are self inflicted because of differing covid restrictions across state and country borders.
As of last Saturday, new vaccine mandates on truckers coming into Canada has already affected more than 38,000 loads of goods and produce going North.
"The mandate throws a “major wrench” in the Canadian and North American supply chains, he added, with grocers, food producers, the auto parts industry and building materials among the sectors expected to be most affected."
Next week the USA starts a similar vaccine mandate affecting truckers entering the US from Canada - Make no mistake: This is 100% imposed on truckers by the state without any evidence of benefits at all. In fact, the CDC admits that the virus spreads and affects both vaccinated and unvaccinated equally which is easy to see by the thousands of vaccinated employees currently missing work due to covid symptoms.
So what's the point?
I'm no expert but it really does seem to me that this is happening by design to purposefully disrupt and even destroy the already fragile supply lines that bring supplies to our businesses and food to our table. I don't usually attribute to malice that which can easily be explained by incompetence but these random and seemingly arbitrary impositions are so many and so frequent that it looks planned. That's just a description of the situation, I'm not speculating what the reasoning might be.
Everywhere I look supplies are a problem either because they aren't available or because they're delayed.
As a lender I'm looking for companies who need capital to adjust to the new landscape - having plenty of working capital now is critical not only because of supply stress but also pricing power; as supplies get scarce prices go up.
Right now money costs less than the rate of increase on basic items. That is, the cost of my capital will be the same in 12 months as it is today but the cost of everything your business will use it for will likely be way higher!