I put this in GQ because I’m interested about supply chain and replenishment practices in retail and industry.
Hypothetical scenario: China announces that due to dockyard maintenance there may disruption in the loading and sailing of container ships. What becomes apparent after a day or two is that no ships are going to the USA. Shipments to other countries are not affected. This continues for a full week.
My question is: what would be the result in retail and industry be? Is there enough supply on hand to make this just an annoyance, or would it becomes serious in a few days? Will Walmart and the dollar stores have to shut down?
My guess is that a lively trade in container transshipment springs up in Canada, maybe West Africa, Japan, or anywhere else that is sort of on the way to the USA - containers arrive there from China, and are immediately forwarded to their final destination in the USA by a shipping line that isn’t limited by whatever restriction China has imposed.
Oh, wait… this is only for a week? There’s some disruption to retail, but I don’t think a week is long enough to bring the system crashing down. Weather conditions can and do delay container ships by similar periods (not all ships at once, of course, but if one company is not shut down by their containers arriving on time, it shouldn’t scale exponentially when it’s more than one company)
Almost anyone doing business overseas and being shipped by container is going to have planned for lead times of 2-3 weeks minimum, 4-6 being more realistic.
When Bangkok got flooded and badly damaged several hard drive plants and manufacturers of a couple sub-components that almost everyone used. it took about 3 weeks before prices skyrocketed. There were serious shortages for a month or two, then it all settled out after that…