Over the past two decades, I've probably read more than thirty articles or sat through twenty-odd podcasts, which hyped the problem seen around the globe of one-way commerce...meaning you had a lot of products, food, agricultural items, oil and natural gas sold by one or two countries. These were warning people....you need a diversified market. Who listened? No one.
In the past month, if you sat and watched public TV news in Germany or sat through public forums....there's been a dozen times when this 'lecture' got uttered yet again. The chief blame? At Ukraine and Russia.
I sat through one of these forum situations last night....maybe 10 minutes of value, where they hyped on this once again.
Lets be blunt....no one from any political party in Germany is listening.
About four years ago, we had this emergency of sorts in Germany, where cancer treatment drugs were in short supply. The logistical path had slowed down, and for about six months....you had doctors calling around Germany to find a pharmacy which had a supply for patient requirements. A discussion started up....most all drugs in Germany were produced by India or China.....something like 90-percent. Naturally, you'd think that people would react, and mandate only half the drugs in a German pharmacy.....be foreign imported. Well....nothing much happened.
At some point in 2021, I watched a German economist talk about soap. If you went back to the 1970s.....most all soap in West Germany....was made in West Germany. Today? The biggest maker and exporter of soap is the US....with Germany in second place. The odd thing is that Germany is now the largest importer of non-European soap in the EU (yes, while it still manufactures soap). Course, you could make the case that Germans are the most 'clean' folks in Europe, and soap is a key part of this situation.
In the past week, I spent forty-five minutes in a German grocery store....mostly just pushing the cart for my wife. But I started to look at labels, country-made-status, and gauge 15,000 odd products in the story.
From vegetables, there's no issue that 90-percent of the products are German grown. Fruit is different, with probably less than a quarter of the fruit being regional or German products. I'd even suggest that one-third of the products come beyond the EU. If you buy grapes now in a non-growing season....it's good odds that they come from Egypt, India, Ecuador, Chile, or Peru.
The point I make here.....our lives are attached to a fairly fragile trade and shipping system. Anything can screw it up, and damage the economy of some country. You do this at a major scale, and global numbers sink like a rock.
Fixing something like this? Politicians are probably the last people you want to engage and use as some 'savior'.
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