🚢 🇺🇸 🇮🇷 ‘Crisis even bigger than Covid’: American business owners are barely getting by

Between shipping disruptions, the lack of containers, high costs because of what’s going on in the Red Sea and higher fertilizer costs, we have this period of disruption that we’ve never encountered before,” said Vojta, who founded the national coffee distributor more than three decades ago. “There’s just so much uncertainty.”

Around the country, American business owners across myriad industries say they’re in a similar boat. A closely watched monthly survey from the Institute for Supply Management raised eyebrows earlier this month after several business leaders compared the current business climate to the pandemic.

Massive disruptions and price instability are forcing businesses to make impossible decisions. They have no idea how to plan, and their inflation-wary customers are in no mood for more price hikes.

“This is a bigger problem than Covid, for sure,” said Jack Buffington, director of the supply chain program at the University of Denver. “This is completely different. This is an energy problem.”

The Trump administration has tried to frame the Iran war as a temporary economic blip — and once resolved, rebounding inflation will quickly reverse itself. But the historic supply chain struggles that America’s business owners face show why resurgent inflation will not be easily resolved – even if the war miraculously ended tomorrow

https://edition.cnn.com/2026/09/20/economy/covid-diesel-supply-chain

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