How the World Ran Out of Everything by Goodman

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.

Arriving Today by Christopher Mims

ARRIVING TODAY by Christopher Mims is an extremely timely book (particularly on Black Friday) in which the Wall Street Journal technology columnist discusses “From Factory to Front Door -- Why Everything Has Changed About How and What We Buy.”  Mims offers a fascinating look at global supply chains – even though he started his research well before the current crunch.  Early chapters focus on shipping and production in Southeast Asia, particularly Vietnam; Mims notes how outsourcing from the US first led to production in the “Asian Tigers” whose own rising wages have “pushed manufacturing down to the next and most geographically proximate countries on the economic ladder, including India, Thailand, Philippines, and Vietnam.” He also explores productivity from “Taylorism” to “Bezosism.” In tracing products around the world (how is it possible that salmon are caught near Scotland, filleted in China, and then returned to Scotland for sale?), Mims looks at numerous points in the distribution channel: container ships and ports; trucking and highways; warehouses and robots. He argues that tapping a button on your phone to order a consumer good that can arrive within 24 hours requires innovations and people who use them to “come together in a planetary-scale clockwork mechanism whose behavior is impossible to understand without building it up from the smallest constituent parts.” The detail is impressive (did you know that shipping containers are only 0.075 inches thick but can be stacked 8 high?): more than ten percent of the book is devoted to notes on supporting data, plus a helpful index. Mims encourages readers to recognize that “In the twenty-first century, how things get to us matters as much as how they are made… in many ways the supply chain and the factory floor are now indistinguishable.” ARRIVING TODAY received a starred review from Publishers Weekly which says: “Readers will be hooked by Mims’s ability to turn what could’ve been a dry supply-chain explainer into a legitimate page-turner.”  I have ordered a copy for a Junior Theme student – it’s arriving on our shelves soon!