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Insights, analysis and must reads from CNN's Fareed Zakaria and the Global Public Square team, compiled by Global Briefing editor Chris Good

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October 12, 2021

The Covid-19 Economy: Supply Tangles, Labor Shortages, and the Unknown

Parts of the global economy rebounded with exuberance from the pandemic crash of 2020, but the party seems to be winding down. The International Monetary Fund has slashed growth projections for the US and for low-income countries, citing the Delta variant, supply-chain issues, global vaccine inequality, and the risk of yet-unknown future Covid-19 variants, as CNN Business's Clare Sebastian explains.
 
In the US, labor shortages are a particular problem. At The New Yorker, John Cassidy notes that the "tough-love" strategy of ending federal unemployment-benefit extensions has flopped. Benefits or no, the virus is keeping people out of the workforce.
 
Everywhere, it seems, supply chains are drawing concern. 
 
The US, reliant as it is on imports, seems to be "running out of everything," writes The Atlantic's Derek Thompson. Shortages of raw materials and "clogged" ports have forced companies to get creative and, in some cases, reroute shipping, Tara Lachapelle and Brooke Sutherland write for Bloomberg.
 
What's going on? At The New Yorker, Amy Davidson Sorkin wrote recently that labor is part of the shipping problem. (In late September, Sorkin wrote, "the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach were approaching a crisis state because more than seventy container ships were idling offshore, in what had become a maritime parking lot; there [weren't] enough dockworkers to unload their cargo, or enough truck drivers to move it out of the ports.")
 
The world is suffering several supply-chain problems all at once, for "distinct yet broadly related" reasons, Tyler Cowen writes for Bloomberg. Renewable-energy sources have yet to replace coal and natural gas, leaving energy supplies short and prices high in Europe and Asia. (High shipping and energy costs both create "ripple effects" on goods and services, Cowen notes.) Computer chips are used in more and more consumer products these days, but pandemic-driven factory shutdowns and natural disasters have hampered supply, Cowen writes, which is one reason why cars are so expensive.

The UK Grades Itself on Covid-19

A parliamentary report has given low marks to the UK's handling of Covid-19, finding that "groupthink" and "fatalistic assumptions about the impossibility of suppressing the virus" produced a slow-footed response. At The Guardian, University of Edinburgh global-public-health professor Devi Sridhar writes that this was obvious to most experts as things unfolded. 
 
There are lessons here for the rest of the world, the Financial Times editorial board writes: "One is to maintain constant readiness, but also to prepare for the right risks," as the NHS having been "starved of resources" in pre-pandemic years left the UK at a disadvantage once the virus hit. Another is to share scientific advice internally and to challenge assumptions.
 
The report's "most important implication," the paper writes, "is that, in hindsight, the most effective response would have been to combine the Asia-Pacific approach—border restrictions, lockdowns, and strenuous test-and-trace to suppress infection—and the western focus on swift vaccinations once available."

In the Taiwan Strait, Communication Could Be Key

How likely is war over Taiwan? Former US National Security Adviser Lt. Gen. (ret.) H.R. McMaster outlined the risks on Sunday's GPS, and a South China Morning Post editorial reminds us that if Taiwan were to pursue true independence from China, the danger level would spike. 
 
But after Beijing ramped up its aerial incursions recently, Bonny Lin and David Sacks write for Foreign Affairs that the risk of accidental war is rising, too; crisis-communication channels will be important, they write, if Beijing, Washington, and Taipei find themselves needing to de-escalate in the event of an aerial collision or a simple mistake.