Gabrielle Coppola
Bloomberg
The anti-vaccine protests choking off a critical trade route between the U.S. and Canada this week are just the latest drama for an auto supply chain increasingly fraught with tension.
First, there’s the chip situation. If you thought we were headed for some kind of linear improvement, consider Ford’s fourth-quarter earnings. The company had a massive beat in the third quarter due to an influx of chips, only to miss by a wide margin in the last three months of the year because of a lack of semiconductors and COVID-related shutdowns roiling its suppliers. Sales will drop in the first quarter as a result, Ford said.