Padraig Martin (@PadraigMartin)

The Canadian Convoy Protest is Impacting Canadian and American Supply Chains As the owner of a couple of trucking companies, I can honestly report that cross border shipments are grinding to a halt. Rail continues to move imported containers into the rail heads to bypass the truckers, but they are now hitting bottlenecks of critical mass. Rail terminals are hitting peak capacity. For Canadians already experiencing supply shortages, this will make matters far worse, as trucking brokers struggle to find cross-border truckers. For the Americans, however, they too will begin feeling additional strains. The reason? Many of the West Coast port issues beginning in mid-2021 forced shipping companies to redirect vessels to West Coast Canadian ports and then either rail them to terminals in the Pac NW, Midwest, or drive them across border points. Now that the rail heads are getting filled up and the truckers are not crossing like they did before, bottlenecks of inbound supplies are causing rail terminals to stop receiving cargo. But it gets worse... Importers who rely on credit terms are being hit with charges by their suppliers well before they receive their freight - which has either been stuck offshore, stuck at the American-Canadian border, or stuck in rail and/or port terminals. For the Walmarts of the world, they can withstand pre-delivery purchase payments. For small businesses, however, they cannot. They rely on receiving goods and selling those goods often before the bill is due (Cash Flow Maximization). These small businesses are now going bankrupt without any relief. What is making matters worse is that the US Dollar is growing weaker, fast. Bills that were valued at one level in certain foreign currencies a year ago cost more today - thanks to the Biden Administration. The totality of this disaster is that small businesses are going out of business and abandoning the cargo. Savannah, for example, reported more than 88,000 abandoned containers at that highly efficient port in November alone. In sum, Trudeau's intransigence and Biden's incompetence are pouring fuel on the fire of a major supply chain disaster. I thoroughly believe that the Canadian Government will attempt to treat the leaders of the Canadian Trucker Convoy like the American Government chose to treat the J6 Protestors. The Rule of Law means nothing to people who are never held accountable. Still, that will lead to even worse supply chain disruptions, bare shelves, and hyper-inflated prices on the few goods that actually make it to market. I look forward to all of those lefty hipsters who are about to learn a key lesson: grocery stores are not filled by means of magic. They are filled by a system that has functioned without any major hiccups for at least a century. They are soon going to have a hard time getting their soy lattes and beard butter.