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Supply
Chain by the Numbers |
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- May 16, 2024
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Amazon's Sprawling Logistics Network; US Manufacturng down Modestly in April; Tariffs on Chinese Imports to Go Way Up; Dangerous Demographics |
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| tG |
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| That is incredibly the amount of logistics-related space in square footage worldwide that is managed by Amazon. That according to an article this week on the TransportTopics.com website. The enormous amount of space is spread across 258 operational facilities in the United States and another 486 scattered around the world, and is of many types of facilities, including traditional fulfilment centers, sortation centers that group shipments by postal areas, delivery stations that prepare a day’s shipments for its Deliver Partners network, and Prime Now hubs near urban centers. Amazon also operates nine inbound cross-dock centers, used to consolidate or break imported shipments and then funnel them to the appropriate fulfillment centers. |
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That was the level of US manufacturing output in April as represented in the monthly index from the Federal Reserve Bank, which was released this week. That was down a bit from an index score of 99.7 in March, as the index has seen scores hovering around the 99.0 level since February 2023, with no real growth, but not recessionary with declines either. The April level was also down, however, a modest 0.5 percentage point versus April 2023. But at an index level of 99.4, it means UtS manufacturing is still now just below output in the baseline year of 2017 (index = 100) now seven years later. It is also well below the all-time high of about 108, reached in late 2007. |
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2.2 |
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| That is the number of babies each woman must have to sustain a population. The scary news: the global fertility rate is about to fall below that level soon, if it hasn’t already happened, according to an article this week in the Wall Street Journal. The US fell below that replacement rate years ago, and is now producing just 1.62 children per female. South Korea’s rate has fallen to an almost unimaginable rate of just 0.72, the world’s lowest. The falling birthrates come with huge implications for the way people live, how economies grow and the standings of the world’s superpowers. “The demographic winter is coming,” Jesús Fernández-Villaverde, an economist specializing in demographics at the University of Pennsylvania, told the Journal. |
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That is the huge level of US tariffs that will be levied on the imports of Chinese-made electric vehicles, according to the Biden administration this week. Beyond raising tariffs on electric vehicles, the White House said Tuesday that Biden was increasing a key tariff rate on steel and aluminum products to 25% from 7.5%, while the tariff on solar cells would rise to 50% from 25%, and a new duty on shipping cranes would be 25%. Those tariff increases, among others, will kick in this year, while others, including a tariff increase to 25% from 7.5% for larger storage batteries and a new tariff on natural graphite set at 25%, will take effect in 2026. Biden administration officials said they delayed the start of some of the tariff increases to give US industries time to reconfigure their supply chains. Wow.
