Supply Chain Woes to Worsen in Summer Months: Trucking Company

Cargo containers are stacked on a ship at the Port of Long Beach, Calif., on Oct. 27, 2021. John Fredricks/The Epoch Times

The United States may experience much worse supply chain pains in the coming summer months because of the massive lockdowns ongoing in China, a large trucking company warned.

“We do forecast that to get a lot worse as we come into the summer months, particularly with what’s happening in the supply chain from an ocean perspective or in China coming inbound,” J.B. Hunt Chief Commercial Officer Shelley Simpson said on Monday during an earnings call.

The company said that there is a temporary relief for now.

“I do think there has been a temporary relief in the dislocation from labor shortages and also just where shipments are located,” Simpson said.

However, the situation in China forebodes a tough summer in the United States.

“If you actually look at the live screenshot of what’s happening in Shanghai, the ships are—it looks just like a lot of ships and a little bit of water. And so that certainly is going to make its way back into the U.S. here this summer,” he elaborated.

Residents stand on a street waiting for nucleic acid tests during lockdown amid the coronavirus disease, also known as COVID-19, pandemic, in Shanghai, China, on April 17, 2022. Aly Song/Reuters

The Chinese regime started a citywide lockdown for the trade hub of over 26 million residents on April 1 after a partial lockdown began on the east side of the city at the end of March.

The authorities on April 11 divided the city into three areas—a closed control area, a control area, and a prevention area. As of April 12, there are more than 10,000 closed control zones involving 15 million people, more than 2,000 control zones involving 1.78 million people, and 10,000 precautionary zones involving 4.8 million people.

Even if it is a so-called precautionary area, strict COVID prevention rules are in place.

China’s health committee released daily data on April 14, claiming that there were 3,486 new confirmed CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus cases and no severe cases. Among them, Shanghai had 3,200 new local cases, while they earlier claimed there were 1,189 cases on April 12. Officials acknowledged in a press briefing that the outbreak in Shanghai is rapidly increasing, with community transmission not yet effectively contained and spillover to multiple provinces and cities.

Given the regime’s practice of falsifying pandemic figures, there is no way to know the real situation, but it is likely to be much more serious.

The shutdown in the city and China’s measures to control the pandemic elsewhere have hurt the economy and rattled global supply chains. Millions of people in Shanghai have struggled with income losses, lack of steady food supplies, separation of families, and poor conditions in quarantine centers.

The massive lockdown is also sending a new ripple through global supply chains for goods ranging from electric cars to iPhones in the United States.

Joyce Liang, Zhao Fenghua, Luo Ya, and Reuters contributed to the report.