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learning > grammaire anglaise - niveau avancé
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ASMA KHALID, HOST:
Hey there. It's the NPR POLITICS PODCAST. I'm Asma Khalid. I cover the White
House. And today on the show, we're going to talk about supply chains, which - I
know just saying that sounds a little bit wonky. So to help us make sense of it
all, we have invited Scott Horsley, NPR's chief economics correspondent, on to
explain it all to us.
Hey there, Scott.
SCOTT HORSLEY, BYLINE: Hey. Love talking about supply chains.
KHALID: (Laughter) So Scott, let's start with a pretty basic question here,
which is, you know, what is a supply chain? I think, you know, some folks
hearing that phrase may kind of gloss over it. It's kind of a wonky term in
itself.
HORSLEY: Sure. Well, at one end of the supply chain you have a consumer who
wants something - a box of cereal, a stereo, a new car, whatever it might be.
And the supply chain is all the people along the way that are involved in
getting that product to the consumer, you know, whether it's the farmer that
grows the wheat for the Wheaties or the auto company that builds the car and all
the suppliers that go into that and the steelworkers and all the component
makers and that sort of thing. And generally speaking, it's a nice chain, where
when you pull on one end, all the different pieces come right along, and it
works very efficiently to deliver an enormous amount of goods to people at low
prices. Right now, though, there are a lot of kinks in that chain.
KHALID: So Scott, you mentioned there's a lot of kinks. People are not
necessarily able to get the products that they are ordering on time, and that
has led to frustration. So walk me through that. What are the problems in the
supply chain right now?
HORSLEY: That's right, yeah. Things are taking longer to get to the consumers,
and they're costing more when they get there. Just this morning we learned that
inflation last month was 5.4%. That matches the highest it's been in 13 years.
And supply chain hang-ups are a big factor of that.
There are a number of things going on. One is, people are just buying a whole
lot more stuff. They haven't been able to eat out or travel or go to concerts as
much as they usually would, so they're spending more on goods. And a lot of
those goods are coming from overseas, or maybe they're just coming from another
part of the country. And that's really overtaxed the transportation system. It's
like trying to squeeze six lanes of traffic through a four-lane tunnel. And so
there's just been a lot of snarls there.
Keep in mind, too, we're still in the midst of a pandemic, so a lot of factories
are having trouble finding enough workers to make the things that people are
ordering, and that's been a hang-up as well. And then as this has dragged on,
some people have decided to take precautions. If they think it's going to take
longer to get some product that they may want a month or two months from now,
they might go ahead and order it now. And that just has meant there's even more
demand. So all of this has led to hang-ups in what is normally a just-in-time,
smoothly functioning supply chain.
KHALID: And Scott, this is not an easy problem to solve. And I should say it's
actually a very tricky thing for the government to step in to solve because key
parts of this supply chain are owned by private companies, right? You're talking
about private retailers - think of, like - Walmart and Home Depot have these,
you know, container ships that they're ordering, but also the ports themselves.
HORSLEY: That's right. Almost all of the supply chain is owned by private
companies, not by the government. It's not as if Amtrak is making these
deliveries or the Air Force is ferrying goods around the country. So almost all
the links in this chain are private - oftentimes, competitors. And so there are
some challenges in getting them all to, you know, line up and move as
efficiently as they'd like.
What the Biden administration has been trying to do is tackle discrete parts of
this. One of the sort of poster children of the supply chain hang-ups has been
the semiconductor shortage that's been plaguing automakers and others. And the
administration, early on, tried to address that. Today they announced a big
effort to try to tackle port congestion, in particular in Los Angeles, which is
the nation's busiest cargo port. The administration and the port announced that
LA will now start operating around-the-clock, seven days a week, to try to clear
some of the backlog of cargo that's been stacking up there.
KHALID: So Scott, even though, you know, as you were saying, key components of
the supply chain are privately owned, as you mentioned, the Biden administration
is stepping in trying to resolve some of the kinks here. I spoke to the
transportation secretary, Pete Buttigieg, today about all of this. I started by
asking him about the news today that the Port of Los Angeles is now going to
operate 24/7, which it had not been doing to date.
PETE BUTTIGIEG: So the best way to think about it is that it's necessary but not
sufficient to help reduce some of these bottlenecks. These ports, LA and Long
Beach - just the two of them represent about 40% of containers coming into this
country. So them going to 24/7 is a big deal. And you can think of that as
basically opening the gates.
Next, we've got to make sure that we have all of the other players going through
those gates, getting the containers off of the ship so that there's room for the
next ship, getting those containers out to where they need to be. That involves
trains. That involves trucks - so many steps between the ship and the shelf. And
part of what we've been doing, including our convening at the White House today
with everybody from retailers to shippers to the port leaders, is to get all of
those players into the same conversation. Because even though they're all part
of the same supply chain, they don't always talk to each other.
KHALID: At the same time, though, I did hear yesterday from White House
officials that, to some degree, the supply chain is essentially in the hands of
the private sector, which really does make me wonder, essentially, what the
government can do. What levers do you all have beyond what you're doing at this
point?
Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg Optimistic On Supply Chain Problems
The NPR Politics Podcast
October 13, 2021,
https://www.npr.org/2021/10/13/
1045747293/transportation-secretary-pete-buttigieg-
optimistic-on-supply-chain-problems
LU: Right. Sure. Sure, sure. Yeah.
So they've adapted to scavenging scraps
that humans leave behind,
going from one unsanitary location to another.
So, you know, we start to associate them
with garbage and uncleanliness.
And here's where it gets a little bit complicated.
Roaches can pick up pathogens from their environment.
Their droppings can contain bacteria that can make people sick,
and roaches can also trigger asthma and exacerbate allergies.
But interestingly, though,
Perry says they're also big groomers.
Cockroaches are cool!,
NPR,
October 12, 2021,
https://www.npr.org/2021/10/07/
1044153372/cockroaches-are-cool
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