Supply shortages transcend simple explanations like globalization or the general decline of US manufacturing. The microcontroller chips we use at Tortuga Audio are made by STMicroelectronics which is based out of Geneva, Switzerland. They have factories all over the world. Most of their factories are running at partial capacity despite the high demand and shortages - because they've lost so many key people to Covid and are having great difficulty finding qualified replacements. Sure, the US would be better off with more home-grown manufacturing capacity but we'd be struggling with the same issues here.
At first I had assumed the chip shortages were limited to the most sophisticated types of chips - microcontrollers. I'm now seeing clear evidence that even workhorse integrated circuit chips like certain op amps and EEPROM memory chips that have been around for decades have become scarce.
Totally unrelated to chips, I had my pool resurfaced this past spring several weeks after the big freeze in Texas. This required a pallet of cement bags plus a few bags of "pebbles" which are crushed/sized stone blend of your choice of colors. Basically, cement and crushed rock. The contractor was delayed several weeks because he couldn't get the crushed rock.....CRUSHED ROCK!!! Thanks to the big freeze, the factory in Texas which had been producing those pebbles for years was back on its heels having been shut down and damaged from the power outage and frozen pipes. Weeks/months later it was still struggling to get production back up as the spring pool season was just getting started. Point being, whether it's extreme global weather or extreme pandemics, supply chains are highly vulnerable to disruption regardless of location.
