Who would have thought that a book about the global supply chain could be so captivating? Peter S. Goodman skillfully combines on-the-ground reporting and human stories with a broad macroeconomic panorama of modern international trade. Following one particular shipment, he takes the reader on a breathtaking tour around the world. I learned so much from this book!

Recommended for anyone who wants to understand the hidden mechanisms behind our everyday consumer decisions.

Thanks to the publisher, Mariner Books, and NetGalley for an advanced copy of this book.

Do you remember the hunt for baby formula in 2022? I know that our family, spread over several states, were actively searching every time any of us went to a pharmacy, grocery store or even online outlet so as to provide our newest family member with sustenance. HOW THE WORLD RAN OUT OF EVERYTHING by Peter S. Goodman reflects on the pandemic's impact by burrowing deep "Inside the Global Supply Chain." Goodman, the Global Economics Correspondent for The New York Times, uses a case study involving a container filled with children's toys to trace the breakdown in a system and "consequences of relying on faraway factories and container ships to keep humanity supplied with goods." The text has three main sections: a review of China-centric globalization; price manipulation and engineered scarcities; and opportunities to reinvent the supply chain. Throughout, Goodman comments repeatedly on labor exploitation and deregulation; he stresses that, "ordinary people were paying the mounting costs" with weak unions, indifferent politicians, and over reliance on "Just in Time," or lean, manufacturing. Extensive notes and an index comprise at least twenty percent of the book. HOW THE WORLD RAN OUT OF EVERYTHING received a starred review from Kirkus ("This book should be in the hands of policymakers and economists before the next crisis emerges.") I would encourage readers looking for related perspective to also check out Arriving Today by Wall Street Journal columnist Christopher Mims. And, Goodman's work even made me think of The Travels Of A T-Shirt In The Global Economy by Rivoli, published almost twenty years ago in a far more optimistic time.

We have this tendency to look back on those crazy pandemic days of toilet-paper hoarding as some sort of weird anomaly or a type of collective madness but was it more, and more importantly, will it happen again? In How The World Ran Out Of Everything, NY Times Global Correspondent Peter S. Goodman takes us through the underpinnings of global shipping, how it went wrong, and if the current move toward onshoring and nearshoring is enough to fix a system that is awaiting its next big crisis.

Supply-chain issues, at their root, come down to corporate greed. It turns out that shareholders really like it when a company runs lean and doesn’t hold excess inventory. They like it even better when a company spends on buybacks. It all works until it doesn’t and suddenly small businesses are trying to figure out how to get their goods across the ocean before the holiday shopping season. Behemoths like Walmart, Costco, and Amazon have a huge advantage when it comes to getting their goods shipped.

The path from “Made In China” to your doorstep is complicated and includes many stops along the way. Goodman traces the path from factory, to container, to ship, and then to the web of unloading, and transporting via truck or train. It was a system most of us didn’t think too much about until supply chain crises prompted a closer look at shipping monopolies and a system that benefits the few at the expense of the many.

Are we complicit in this because we buy cheap goods? I’ve read a few books on fast fashion. Fashionopolis by Dana Thomas and Overdressed by Elizabeth Cline are important works in that space. Certainly, we all buy a lot of stuff. I’m a pretty strict minimalist, and I’m far from immune to the lure of inexpensive things. However, I question if the onus really belongs with the consumer and so does Goodman. I had always thought that the issues facing the trucking industry were about aging truckers and people not willing to take on the job. It turns out that the turnover rate flirts with 100% industry-wide simply because trucking companies make the job harder than it has to be. Like shipping in general, it’s a system that works until it doesn’t.

Are there any answers to this mess? Maybe. In the third part of the book, Goodman explores our options. We can’t undo years of offshoring but there’s a movement toward derisking the relationship with China. This takes many forms, from bringing factories to the U.S., nearshoring to Mexico and other parts of Latin America, and increasingly using robotics to take on more manufacturing tasks. All of these shifts will take years, maybe decades, to pull off, and in the meantime, we are still highly reliant on China as the manufacturer of the world. The question is, will the projects in progress right now come to fruition, or will we lose our sense of urgency and concern over the global supply chain?