Supply Chain Pain
By Molly Martin
With poverty on the rise, a dearth of affordable housing, climbing infant mortality, and a pandemic crisis that our failing healthcare system struggles to confront, it’s starting to seem like the U.S. is sliding into the status of a “Third World”country. Now comes the specter of economic hardship as we face unprecedented shortages and price increases amid a perfect storm of events, including COVID-related labor issues, extreme weather and surging consumer demand.
At the center of this expanding debacle is the bottleneck at two major container ports in California. Some ships have been forced to wait up to a month to unload their goods, leaving everything from food and household products to toys, electronics, clothing, and cars sitting in limbo. The delays have been compounded by a trucker shortage, leading to an enormous and growing backlog of containers.
When I read about supply problems that are emptying store shelves all over the U.S., I confess that I hoped Americans might connect a few dots, might get a taste of the misery we have imposed on the country of Cuba for six decades.
Do Americans even know that our government prevents trade with Cuba, the most enduring trade embargo in modern history?
Do Americans know that this year 184 countries voted in favor of a resolution to demand the end of the US economic blockade on Cuba, for the 29th year in a row, with only the U.S. and Israel voting against?
Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez Parrilla, present during the vote in the UN General Assembly Hall, said that the blockade is a “massive, flagrant and unacceptable violation of the human rights of the Cuban people.”
He added that the embargo is about “an economic war of extraterritorial scope against a small country already affected in the recent period by the economic crisis derived from the pandemic.” Mr. Rodriguez estimated 2020 losses to be $9.1 million. He said that the sanctions have made it harder for his country to acquire the medical equipment needed to develop COVID-19 vaccines as well as equipment for food production.
I am horrified and embarrassed that my own government seems to revel in overthrowing governments that fail to put U.S. interests at heart. That many of these were democratically elected has not saved them.
The U.S. has been trying to overthrow the Cuban government since it first formed in 1959 and we are still at it. The blockade is meant to economically squeeze the island and create enough discontent within Cuba to force the ruling Communist Party to step down.
Following historic protests in Cuba where thousands took to the streets, Cuban officials have repeatedly blamed the six-decade U.S. embargo for Cuba’s food, fuel and medicine shortages.
Our problems are First World problems, but of course the poor in the U.S. will be affected disproportionately as prices rise. That Apple watch and that 65-inch TV might still be sitting at the port on Christmas but we will survive. I just hope our continuing supply chain mess might impress upon Americans the ways our economic embargoes affect actual people (and not just governments) around the world.
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