AUSTIN, Texas — California is “America on fast-forward,” it is often said. Liberals quote the maxim with pride, pointing to the state’s diversity and its outsize share of economic output, technological innovation, venture capital and growth. Conservatives put scare quotes around it, warning about the dystopia that awaits if America becomes any more like California, with its high taxes and housing costs, challenged schools, dwindling water supply, devastating wildfires and permanent Democratic majority.
But if you’re really looking for a bellwether state that offers a glimpse into the country’s economic future and engines of growth as well as its political fault lines in the long run, it’s not California. It’s Texas.
That’s what the 2020 census tells us, along with the last 20 years of economic and demographic data. Many Americans are moving to cities; Texas is urbanizing even faster than California. And we hear a lot of talk about what will happen to our politics when the United States becomes a majority-minority country, but like California, Texas has already reached that demographic horizon. Its present brand of politics may offer clues to the future of struggles across the country between a grasping after mythology and the shifting demographics of America.
I understand that the very idea that Texas could be a herald of the national future is terrifying for many liberals and moderates, given the Texas G.O.P.’s assaults on voting rights and reproductive liberty, the state’s new open carry laws and our governor’s hostility to mask and vaccine mandates.
But given the changes in Texas’s demography, economy and urban geography, it’s fair to say that its conservative lawmakers are even more frightened of what the future may hold for themselves. They are so scared, in fact, that they are throwing sand into that growth engine’s gears.
Here is what you have to understand about Texas. First, it is growing. It added 4.2 million residents between 2000 and 2010, and another four million in the last decade for a growth rate of almost 40 percent — double that of the country as a whole.
But even more striking is what all those new Texans look like. Since 2010, over 95 percent of them have been people of color.
People outside Texas often believe that the state is almost monolithically white, rural and conservative. In fact, less than 40 percent of Texans are white non-Hispanics. For every new white resident that Texas welcomed over the past decade, there have been three Black residents, three Asians, three people with multiracial backgrounds and 11 Hispanics. Dallas-Fort Worth, Austin and Houston also have large L.G.B.T.Q. populations (as a percentage of their residents).
The conservative members of the Texas Legislature might be threatened by diverse cities, but most Texans aren’t afraid of them, because 90 percent of them live in or around them. Almost 70 percent of Texans are from the Dallas-Fort Worth, Houston, Austin or San Antonio metros. Almost all of the state’s population growth over the last decade occurred in its metros, which grew 18 percent as compared with less than 1 percent for the state’s rural areas.
Six of the 10 fastest-growing suburban counties in the United States are in Texas. Fort Worth is America’s fastest-growing city with at least 500,000 residents; Austin is in second place. Each has a unique economic mix, culture and character, from the global gateways of Houston and Dallas to the technology and innovation hub of Austin. El Paso is the anchor of a thriving binational mega-region; San Antonio is a cultural center and a leader in life sciences.
The state’s changing demographics are just a part of the story; its changing economy and industrial mix is the other. I have spent more than 20 years working as an economic development adviser for cities around the world. What’s striking about Texas is the outsize role that the private sector, P3s (partnerships between governments and the private sector), developers and businesses of all sizes expect to play in policymaking.
That can be a bad thing, because companies can and do take undue advantage of the state’s business-friendly environment. But companies are not just attracted to Texas because of its low taxes, generous incentives and unrestricted land use. They genuinely value the idea of “limited government” and having a seat at the policymaking table. This is why we’re seeing so many California companies moving to Texas, or at least expanding into it — in the past year, for example, Oracle, Tesla and HP.
In my experience, Texas has a much more diverse, broader group of community and policy stakeholders than you’d find in California, where city, state and county officials and metropolitan planning organizations are hugely powerful. Texas is no longer just about big oil and cattle; we have one of the most diversified economies in the country. Texas’s creative class — professionals, techies, scientists, educators and cultural types — has grown nearly 30 percent since 2010.
Yet Gov. Greg Abbott and the Republican Party have embraced a top-down policy agenda that is backward-looking, excludes huge swaths of Texas’s citizenry and runs against the grain of many of its new stakeholders’ values. They are looking to shore it up by a combination of gerrymandering, voter suppression and relentless cultural warfare. As long as Texas continues to grow, they see no downside to it. But it seems to me and many other Texans that they are making a fatal miscalculation.
Most of the people and companies that have been drawn to Texas aren’t conservative pilgrims in search of endless culture-war strife. Many of them — Republican soccer moms and Democratic software engineers, Hispanic building contractors and Black attorneys — are appalled by the G.O.P.’s divisive agenda. Results from the August 2021 University of Texas/Texas Politics Project poll bear this out. Fifty-two percent say Texas is headed in the wrong direction — the worst wrong-track number we’ve seen since the project began.
Many Texans are deeply concerned about climate change: The state is still recovering from Hurricane Harvey and the severe winter storm of 2021. Many worry about their mounting health care costs: Almost two in 10 Texans have no health insurance, and the governor and Legislature have refused to expand Medicaid funding. Covid has taken the lives of almost 65,000 Texans, and the state’s low vaccination rate makes it likely there will be many more. The high-technology companies that have been driving so much of Houston’s and Austin’s growth don’t have to stay in Texas, and they won’t if it becomes harder for them to recruit top people to move here.
Booms do come to an end, as California learned the hard way. You have to go back to the 1980s to mark the years of California’s greatest growth over the last 50 years, when it experienced a growth rate of nearly 26 percent.
Mr. Abbott and company are staking their futures on an anachronistic version of Texas. It’s time for the state’s private sector to use its seat at the table to ensure that the unique governance model is not sacrificed on the altar of populist revanchism.
The Texas model of public-private cooperation with its mutual focus on growth is potentially one that other states could follow. But it is hanging in the balance. Some companies are already offering to relocate employees, a small but significant warning sign to Republican officials.
As goes Texas, so will the United States — for better or for worse.
Is there a purer, more perfect expression of the Trumpified Republican Party than the press release that Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.) sent out on Sept. 24?
It demanded that President Biden be removed from office for “colluding with the Taliban.” This was flagrantly hypocritical because in February she criticized Biden for not withdrawing from Afghanistan fast enough — and then in August she praised the Taliban for “building back better.” But what truly made the release so priceless and preposterous was the logo: “IMEACH BIDEN.” Boebert is showing her contempt not just for political norms but for spelling norms, too.
No one should be surprised that Boebert, who has expressed support for the QAnon cult as well as Biden’s impeachment, is a rising star on the right. Former president Donald Trump’s Twitter feed — back when he still had one — was rife with glaring misspellings as well as absurd lies. Some even suspected the misspellings were deliberate — intended to signal his contempt for eggheads who might care about such niceties.
In the 1980s, when I became a Republican, the GOP took pride in describing itself as the “party of ideas.” But under Trump’s leadership, Republicans have reclaimed their old reputation, dating back to the 1950s, as the “stupid party.” What’s even more telling: This is not a source of shame or embarrassment for the party’s populists. They’re the stupid-and-proud-of-it party.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) responded to House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy’s (R-Calif.) criticism of a mask mandate by saying, “He’s such a moron.” My brilliant colleague Dana Milbank carefully examined this charge and concluded it was “mostly true.” Yet McCarthy is a veritable brainiac compared with many of his GOP colleagues.
On July 30, Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.) praised Medicare and Medicaid for protecting “the healthcare of millions of families” and warned: “To safeguard our future, we must reject Socialist healthcare schemes.” Somehow Republicans miss the obvious contradiction between defending Medicare/Medicaid and assailing socialized medicine.
That Stefanik is a Harvard graduate suggests she may only be playing dumb to establish her populist bona fides. This is a charade perfected by Sen. John Neely Kennedy (R.-La.), a graduate of Vanderbilt University, Oxford University and the University of Virginia Law School who pretends to be a country bumpkin. But it tells you something significant that even the brightest lights of the GOP feel compelled to act as if they were dim bulbs.
For some Republicans in Congress, of course, acting dumb comes more naturally than for others. Take Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-Tex.) — please. He warns that the Green New Deal, which hasn’t actually passed, is already ushering in an avian apocalypse. Birds that aren’t killed by windmills, he said, are spontaneously combusting while flying over solar panels. He acts as if “flamers” — yes, that’s the term he uses — are actually a big thing. In fact, fossil fuel plants kill many more birds — and people — than solar arrays. Little wonder that, as Gohmert himself admitted, people think he is “the dumbest guy in Congress.”
Hold my dunce cap, says Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.). She doesn’t believe in evolution but does believe in Jewish space lasers. Then there’s Rep. Madison Cawthorn (R-N.C.), who tweets that “1984 is a great fiction novel to read.” As opposed to a great nonfiction novel?
The covid pandemic has brought forth a corresponding pandemic of right-wing inanity. Greene and other Republicans have compared efforts to vaccinate Americans — i.e., to save lives — to the Nazis’ mass murder of Jews. Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) said he would support vaccine mandates only if “there’s some incredibly dangerous disease.” Covid-19, which has already killed at least 700,000 Americans, doesn’t qualify. Johnson just introduced the Prevent Unconstitutional Vaccine Mandates for Interstate Commerce Act. This raises the obvious question (obvious, that is, to everyone but Johnson): If mandates are unconstitutional, why is legislation needed to stop them? Won’t the courts overturn them?
More egregious examples of Republican ignorance can be found in all their accusations that Democrats are turning America socialist. “They’re forcing their communism through the corporations,” Greene charges, as if “communist corporations” weren’t an oxymoron. Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) warns that a “socialistic government” won’t “allow women … to be on stage, or entertain.” She seems to have confused the communists with the Taliban. Meanwhile, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) is upping the rhetorical ante. “The $3.5 trillion Biden plan isn’t socialism, it’s marxism,” he tweets. By his logic, we should already have gulags in America since Trump added $7.8 trillion to the national debt.
I wish I could report some sign that the GOP is wising up. In fact, it is continuing to dumb itself down. Josh Mandel, who is seeking the GOP nomination for U.S. Senate in Ohio, recently tweeted: “You can’t spell panDEMic without ‘DEM.’ Is this a coincidence?” That is a level of reasoning that would seem more at home on an elementary school playground than on the floor of the Senate. But Mandel should fit right in with his Republican colleagues if he is elected. They “imeach” themselves with every witless word.
The Biden administration has now branded parents who disagree with school board officials as "domestic terrorists".
Does anyone here find that unsettling?
CLAIM: The National School Boards Association is asking the Biden administration to label parents who protest school policies domestic terrorists.
AP’S ASSESSMENT: False. The organization — the NSBA, for short — is not asking Biden to label parents who protest at school board meetings as terrorists. The NSBA asked the administration to do an interagency investigation of threats of violence against school board members and said the threats “could be the equivalent to a form of domestic terrorism and hate crimes.” Biden has yet to publicly comment on the issue, and there’s no indication he or the Department of Justice has called protesting parents “domestic terrorists,” despite false claims to that effect by social media users.
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On Thursday, social media users took to Instagram to spread misinformation about the letter.
A popular Instagram post circulated widely last week, showing a screenshot of a tweet by Chris Rufo, an anti-critical race theory activist and senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, a conservative think tank. “The National School Boards Association asked the feds to crack down on anti-critical race theory protests as ‘domestic terrorism,’” Rufo said in the screenshot image.
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But the NSBA says comments made by Rufo and Fight for Schools aren’t accurate because violence and threats are the issue, not protests from parents.
One person is citing Breitbart exhaustively here.
On this date five years ago, in the run-up to the 2016 election, the Washington Post broke the story of the so-called Access Hollywood tape, a video from 2005 in which Donald Trump told television host Billy Bush about his approach to women. "I don't even wait” to start kissing them, he said. “And when you're a star, they let you do it. You can do anything.... Grab 'em by the p***y. You can do anything."
Today’s events indicated that, as president, he took a similar approach to the Department of Justice.
This morning, the Democratic majority of the Senate Judiciary Committee released a draft report of its investigation into Trump’s attempt to use the Department of Justice to overturn the results of the 2020 election. The report found that Trump repeatedly tried to get the DOJ to endorse his false claims that the election was stolen and to overturn its results, singling out nine specific attempts to change the outcome. Trump, the report says, “grossly abused the power of the presidency.”
The report points to White House chief of staff Mark Meadows as a key player in the attempt to subvert the DOJ, and it singles out a number of other officials as participants in the pressure campaign. Those people include Jeffrey Bossert Clark from within the DOJ, whom Trump tried to install as acting attorney general to push his demands; Representative Scott Perry (R-PA); Doug Mastriano, a Republican state senator from Pennsylvania; and Cleta Mitchell, a legal adviser to the Trump campaign. The draft report also notes that under Attorney General William Barr, the DOJ “deviated from longstanding practice” when it began to investigate allegations of fraud before the votes were certified.
The report concludes that the efforts to subvert the DOJ were part of Trump’s attempt “to retain the presidency by any means necessary,” a process that “without a doubt” “created the disinformation ecosystem necessary for Trump to incite almost 1000 Americans to breach the Capitol in a violent attempt to subvert democracy by stopping the certification of a free and fair election.”
The minority of the Senate Judiciary Committee promptly published a rebuttal, defending the former president by saying that “President Trump listened to his advisors, including high-level DOJ officials and White House Counsel and followed their recommendations.”
The top Republican member of the Senate Judiciary Committee is Chuck Grassley (R-IA), who is running for reelection in 2022 and is facing a primary challenger from the right. Grassley will be speaking on Saturday at Trump’s “rally” in Iowa. As then–Senate president pro tempore and thus the next person in line to count the electoral votes if Vice President Mike Pence were absent, Grassley was not uninvolved in the events of January 6.
Indeed, on January 5, Roll Call reported Grassley’s statement that he and not Vice President Mike Pence would preside over the counting of the certified votes the following day. “If the Vice President isn’t there, and we don’t expect him to be there, I will be presiding over the Senate,” Grassley said. His staff immediately walked the statement back, but it does suggest he might have been aware of some of the White House machinations to overturn the election.
On CNN, host Jake Tapper called Grassley’s response to the majority’s report “a very, very generous to the point of delusional reflection of what actually happened.”
Today was also the deadline for four of Trump’s closest allies to turn over documents to the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol and to schedule testimony. Former chief of staff Mark Meadows, social media manager Dan Scavino, adviser Steve Bannon, and former Defense Department official Kash Patel have until midnight tonight to contact the committee.
Trump’s lawyers wrote a letter telling the four men not to cooperate with the congressional subpoena. The letter claims that Trump is planning to contest the subpoenas on the basis of executive privilege.
But even if this president does accept his assertion of executive privilege—and there are good reasons for any president to be nervous about depositions from a chief of staff—such an assertion would likely not cover Steve Bannon.
Meanwhile, the committee issued three new subpoenas today, this time for people or entities involved in rallies to protest the 2020 election results to testify. The committee subpoenaed Ali Abdul Akbar, known as Ali Alexander, and Nathan Martin, as well as Stop the Steal L.L.C., an organization affiliated with the January 6 protest in Washington.
After the election, Alexander called frequently for violence to overturn the results and claimed to be in contact with White House officials and Representatives Mo Brooks (R-AL), Paul Gosar (R-AZ), and Andy Biggs (R-AZ) about January 6. In a now-deleted video, Alexander said: “We four schemed up… putting maximum pressure on Congress while they were voting… so that who we couldn’t lobby, we could change the hearts and the minds of Republicans who were in that body, hearing our loud roar from outside.”
This evening the Senate managed to pass a measure to raise the debt ceiling until December, but it was not an easy sell. Trump continued to object to clearing the way for Democrats to keep the nation from tipping over the cliff into default despite the fact that the nation racked up $7.8 trillion in debt on his watch and raising the debt ceiling is necessary to cover that debt.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell’s (R-KY) promise that the Republicans would no longer block the Democrats from addressing the issue did not stop a number of Republican senators from continuing to object. Finally, 11 Republicans agreed to join the Democrats to break a Republican filibuster by a vote of 61–38. The Democrats then passed legislation to address the debt ceiling by a strict party vote of 50–48 and sent the measure to the House.
It took a filibuster-proof majority of the Senate not to pass a bill to protect the nation’s economic health and international standing, but simply to keep an angry minority at bay long enough to permit Democrats to pass that bill.
The news that the Senate had agreed to a deal made the Dow Jones Industrial Average jump 330 points.
President Biden’s agenda is in peril. Democrats hold a bare 50 seats in the Senate, which gives any member of their caucus the power to block anything he or she chooses, at least in the absence of Republican support. And Senators Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema are wielding that leverage ruthlessly.
But here’s the truly frightening thought for frustrated Democrats: This might be the high-water mark of power they’ll have for the next decade.
Democrats are on the precipice of an era without any hope of a governing majority. The coming year, while they still control the House, the Senate and the White House, is their last, best chance to alter course. To pass a package of democracy reforms that makes voting fairer and easier. To offer statehood to Puerto Rico and Washington, D.C. To overhaul how the party talks and acts and thinks to win back the working-class voters — white and nonwhite — who have left them behind the electoral eight ball. If they fail, they will not get another chance. Not anytime soon.
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To see how bad the map is for Democrats, think back to 2018, when anti-Trump fury drove record turnout and handed the House gavel back to Nancy Pelosi. Senate Democrats saw the same huge surge of voters. Nationally, they won about 18 million more votes than Senate Republicans — and they still lost two seats. If 2024 is simply a normal year, in which Democrats win 51 percent of the two-party vote, Shor’s model projects a seven-seat loss, compared with where they are now.
Sit with that. Senate Democrats could win 51 percent of the two-party vote in the next two elections and end up with only 43 seats in the Senate. You can see Shor’s work below. We’ve built a version of his model, in which you can change the assumptions and see how they affect Democrats’ projected Senate chances in 2022 and 2024.
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The core problem Democrats face is that almost all politics is now national. They are one party facing electoral disaster, and they will rise or fall together. Democrats cannot escape one another, no matter how they might try.
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The supply chain disruptions are beginning to affect the supply chain, like the ouroboros serpent eating its tail. There is a shortage of shipping containers because so many are full or stuck on vessels waiting to unload.
Big rig trucks are sitting idle and unable to move goods to alleviate the backlog because mechanics are waiting on parts for repairs which are at the port waiting to be trucked. Equipment such as water pumps, NOX sensors, and rebuild kits are delayed for the want of a truck to deliver the parts. And manufacturers of new trucks are running into the same problem as car manufacturers — a chip shortage — creating a reported backlog of 260,000 truck orders.
It’s no wonder those working in logistics are warning the supply chain is nearing collapse which threatens to cripple commerce worldwide.
Even items which are merely delayed and not actually scarce can destabilize an entire industry.
For example, if a plumber has to wait weeks for a hot water heater, the cash flow of the business slows down. The owner still has overhead and fixed costs such as lease payments, utilities, and payroll that must be covered. The longer the delay, the greater the likelihood the business will go under.
The problem doesn’t seem to be getting better. It’s beginning to look like the supply chain crisis will persist through all of 2022.
The chips are down
If you track nothing else, keep an eye on semiconductors.
The most pressing problem in the supply chain is the shortage of semiconductor chips which has damaged many sectors, and is expected to last beyond 2022. This is the most critical shortage in the supply chain.
If a product has any sort of electronics, it’s got a chip.
Suppliers are planning on upping production, but the new facilities won’t be online to alleviate the shortfall until 2023 or 2024. Other experts are more optimistic.
Intel is back in the chip game and plans to open two facilities in Arizona at a cost of $20 billion. TSMC is also building a plant in the state as well at a cost of $12 billion.
Malaysia’s Unisem, a major chip assembler and tester, will close it’s Ipoh plants until September 15 to stop the spread of COVID-19 after three employees died.
Rohm, who supplies chips to Toyota and Ford, expects the shortage to continue through 2022.
New Automobiles, Used Vehicles and Parts
“…the auto industry faces a volume drop of up to 36 million units over the next three years…”— AlixPartners
Due to a worldwide shortage of semiconductor chips, car manufacturers have cut back or stopped production on some new vehicles. An estimated 7.7 million vehicles will not be produced this year. This is driving up prices and demand for used vehicles, which is exacerbating ongoing delays for parts.
Toyota, the worlds top auto maker, is cutting production by 40%. The company announced its annual production would be reduced by 300,000 vehicles. This is especially troubling as Toyota has been stockpiling components in aftermath of a 2011 earthquake.
Germany’s auto industry has been hit hard, Volkswagen, Ford, BMW and Daimler factories all facing problems. Opel and Eisenach closing plants until 2022; Wolfsburg Volkswagen plant will stop production for two weeks; Ford extended the closure of its Cologne plant until the end of October.
America’s General Motors is shutting down 8 of its 15 North American assembly plants possibly into 2022. Ford is shutting down F-150 truck and Transit van production at its Kansas City Assembly Plant in Missouri beginning September 13. Production is limited to one shift at Ford’s Dearborn Truck Plant. For the next two weeks, shifts have been reduced from three to two at Ford’s Kentucky Truck Plant, which builds Super Duty trucks, the Ford Expedition and the Lincoln Navigator.
Honda expects production to be at 70% in October. Nissan extended the shutdown of its Smyrna, TN plant for two weeks.
“The auto industry is one of the most important industries in the United States. It historically has contributed 3–3.5 percent to the overall Gross Domestic Product (GDP). … The auto industry spends $16 to $18 billion every year on research and product development — 99 percent of which is funded by the industry itself.” — Center for Automotive Research
Demand for used vehicles has been climbing, mostly due to the downturn in new car production and COVID. Auto manufacturers are reporting shortages of wiring harnesses, plastics and glass, in addition to the chip problem. This is impacting auto parts supplies. Also, it looks as if there may be a tire shortage in the future, according to Car and Driver.
Arabica Coffee Beans
Coffee is one of the biggest imports. after petroleum for many nations. The US alone imports $3.1 billion worth, with the top three in value coming from Colombia, Switzerland, and Brazil in July. You may not think that is a big deal, but imagine the economic fallout of Starbucks having to pay 45% more to source beans. The price is the highest since 2014 and Arabica beans have risen 40%.
Brazil, the world’s largest producer accounting for half the global supply, lost 20% of its coffee plants due to frost and severe drought. This was a decline of 40% of its annual production, about 18 million bags.
Torrential rains in Colombia, the world’s second largest supplier of Arabica beans, resulted in a decline of 14 million (132-pound) bags. Colombia and Brazil account for two-thirds of the world’s Arabica production and both nations’ output has been slashed. There is rising concerns of growers defaulting on coffee contracts.
Coffee is a global commodity, Watch for the economic fallout from this shortage.
Lumber, Paper Pulp, Toilet Paper, Cardboard, Books.
“Soaring lumber prices that have tripled over the past 12 months has caused the price of an average new single-family home to increase by $35,872.” — National Association of Home Builders
Labor shortages, and greater demand for boxes from online merchants is currently impacting many industries that rely on paper products. Experts predict this problem could persist into 2023. Lumber shortages drove the price to a record $1,686 per thousand board feet in May, a whopping 406% increase in a year.
Wood pulp, a byproduct of wood used as a raw material for paper products, has increased 50.2% over the past year, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics.
The toilet paper shortage is currently as bad as it was at the beginning of the pandemic. Only 60% of orders to retailers are being shipped. Costco is reinstating purchasing limits across the nation.
Supply chain disruptions are causing problems for the publishing industry ahead of the holidays. Orders for books that took a few days are now reported to take up to 8 weeks for delivery.
Wheat, barley, beans, peas
Probably no shortage is more disconcerting than food, especially a staple product like wheat. You can blame a drought in Southwest, West, and Northern Great Plains states, affecting 98% of the spring wheat production.
Consumers can expect higher prices or even bare shelves when shopping for bread, flour, pasta, pastries, beer, and pet food.
Peas, an important source of protein for vegetable burgers, fell by 45% to the lowest levels in ten years.
Gaming consoles and graphics cards
Bad news for gamers, but the console and graphic card shortage is expected to continue into 2022, perhaps as far as next September or beyond. It’s not just the chip problem, but components are difficult to source.
HVAC equipment, parts, refrigerant
If you are thinking of replacing your heating or cooling system, you may want to prepare for a delay. Contractors are reporting difficulty sourcing parts and refrigerant due to the supply chain disruption and chip shortage.
The labor shortage has also visited the industry. Raw materials that go into these systems such as steel, aluminum, copper and plastics are in short supply. Also scarce are eectrical components, such as motors and compressors, along with evaporator coils, resins for pans, and control boards.
Shortages are expected to last until the end of the year, but may be longer as many of the parts and supplies are imported. High-efficiency system that use chips will likely be delayed into 2022 and beyond.
Silicone rubber
Silicone rubber prices have increased up to 25% and further hikes are predicted. Major producers Dow, Wacker Chemie A.G., Momentive, Elkem, and Shin-Etsu Chemical Co. Ltd. are increasing output.
This shortfall in supply appears to be driven by scarcity due to the supply chain, increased demand, and labor shortage.
Appliances
COVID messed up both the supply and demand side of major appliances like refrigerators, freezers, dishwashers, dryers, dehumidifiers, and microwaves. A hot housing market ramped up demand, then came the supply chain issues.
Manufacturers are grappling with a shortage of stainless steel and a 20% increase in the cost of raw materials. Expect higher prices and delays of up to 8 months.
Chicken Wings
It may be difficult to believe, but climate change, along with rising demand has created a shortage of chicken wings. The Texas blizzard resulted in the loss of 545,000 baby chicks which could not be shipped due to hazardous road conditions, and another 455,000 died from freezing temperatures. The price of wings is up a reported 87%.
Pool Liners, Chemicals, Chlorine Tabs
The Pool & Hot Tub Alliance reports a 24% growth in the industry over last year. Shortages of PVC pipe, valves, tile, heaters, and concrete used in other industries is causing construction delays. The ongoing national labor shortage is negatively impacting pool and spa businesses.
Chlorine tablets are in short supply after a fire at the BioLab facility, and of course, COVID-19. Panic buying is reported to be a contributing factor in the rising costs.
Above ground pool liners are another item in short supply.
Drywall
If the lumber, electrical, and steel shortage wasn’t bad enough, the construction industry is grappling with a rising prices on drywall. Thanks to the Texas spring blizzard, a facility producing latex was severely damaged. This, along with a shortage of synthetic gypsum, led to the a decline in inventory.
Printers and Ink
One of the unforeseen consequences of millions of people working at home was the increased demand for printers and ink. Not only did telework move printing from the office to home, but a massive uptick of online shopping increased the need to print return labels and receipts.
According to Deloitte Global, home printer sales increased 15% in 2020 to about $5 billion or about 30 million units. Manufacturers have back orders on one million units.
HP, Canon and Epson inks are often out of stock, with severe shortages on ink cartridges like the HP 304 and 305.
