Who wields the power in the world’s supply chains?

SUPPLY-CHAIN managers cannot seem to catch a break. Consider the past month alone. A collapsed bridge has walled off the Port of Baltimore, one of the biggest on America’s east coast, until at least late May. A big earthquake in Taiwan, where a large share of microchips are made, has rattled an industry that increasingly underpins a lot of the world’s manufacturing. Houthi rebels in Yemen keep lobbing missiles at ships in the Red Sea, a critical passage for seaborne trade. America and China are still at loggerheads over their mutual economic entanglements. Wars still rack Ukraine and Gaza.