Everything is expensive
JANI, A 4-FT. PLUSH GIRAFFE, ARRIVED on my doorstep in mid-July, her brown eyes glassy as if she were still finding her bearings after a long journey at sea.
What a journey it has been. It was August of last year that Viahart, the company that sells Jani on Amazon, ordered a container’s worth of plush toys, including her. This was around the time U.S. consumers started spending again after an initial dip at the beginning of the pandemic. And as demand for toys and TVs and couches rose, the ships and trains and trucks carrying them got overwhelmed. That made it much more expensive to get Jani to my doorstep.
“Good Day, No rail schedule yet. Rail delays due to chassis shortage & port congestion. Please continue to monitor,” reads an email from COSCO Shipping (North America), the company responsible for getting the container from China to Viahart’s Texas warehouse, about why the container was sitting for weeks at the Port of Los Angeles. Before the pandemic, Viahart paid $4,700 to send a 40-ft. container from China to Texas. Now it’s around $21,000.
There’s no question that inflation is surging in the U.S. The cost of goods was up 5.4% in July from the same period a year ago, the largest annual increase since 2008. Many things can cause inflation: increased consumer demand, a rise in wages, a spike in other costs. This time around, economists agree that an overwhelmed logistics network is largely to blame. “If you look at where prices are rising, it’s not across the board; it’s in really specific sectors,” like lumber and cars, says J.W. Mason, an economics professor at John Jay College. These
