James Stout

There have been strikes and protests over high gas prices by people who normally drive buses.

Even in the U.S., you can talk to people who try to do Uber deliveries, and it's becoming effectively impossible even to do that simply because gas prices are so high.

But they are simply nowhere near as bad here as they are in places like the Philippines.

Now, the interconnected nature of the global economy means that there are things that are being broken right now

that are going to break more things later down the line and are continuing to break things down and cross the supply chain.

But the ripples are moving slowly.

Transportation costs are something that we tend to think about in terms of moving people around, right?

We tend to think about it in terms of buses, in terms of cars.

However...

One of the very significant issues that we are running into across particularly Southeast Asia, also Southeast Asia, to combining all sort of, I don't know, three of the regions, a bunch of the island nations in the Pacific are dealing with this too to various extent.

Sri Lanka has been one of the worst hits to the extent that we're seeing a bunch of these countries are doing kind of like miniature government shutdowns.

And obviously, there's a bunch of different versions of this.

Pakistan, for example, is going into more debt in an attempt to sort of keep the economy running.

But returning to transformation costs for a moment, it is important that we also understand that goods are transported and increases in the price of gasoline to the point where it's simply impossible to afford also affects shipping costs.

And in particular, it affects things that are delivered on trucks.

I'm going to read this quote about Vietnam and rice production in Vietnam.

In today's abnormal times, rice buyers are hesitating.

Shipping delays of 10 to 15 days have become common as carriers slow steam to conserve fuel.

Basmati rice from India bound for the Middle East has been unable to get through the Strait of Hormuz.

In the Philippines, wholesalers are not sure when there might be enough diesel to move imports around the country.