I have a feeling they'll be back, eventually. The major issue right now is the massive shortage of shipping containers...you had 18+ months of everything shut down, to the point ships were losing hundreds of thousands of dollars/day because they couldn't get into port...LA had a backlog of days of ships WAITING to be off-loaded/reloaded.
A LOT of those shipping containers are still stuffed to the gills with whatever happened to be shipped in them and I guarantee that a bunch of those "cans" are considered "lost" even though they are in fact sitting somewhere on a dock. I heard that one used to be able to order an empty shipping container and generally have it in a day or so....now it can take weeks just to get ONE empty container. This is affecting ALL countries and ALL ports. There's literally trains, miles long loaded to the gills with container cars stacked to the max without a destination, with cargo that no one seems to know who owns, where it's supposed to go, who's merchandise is inside of it etc. Total logistics failure with the world shut down for Covid for over a full year! I've heard estimates from industry insiders that they NEED MILLIONS upon MILLIONS of empty containers. These containers physically exist, but have been misplaced, mislogged or not logged into a computer and it might take 2-5 years before this industry gets back to the efficiency it was working at pre 2020.
The ports were severely overloaded, workers that continued to show up were only a percentage of a full shift workforce, ships sailed to alternate ports in the hopes of being able to get unloaded/loaded quicker than they could have say, in LA. This is a complete and total global breakdown. Add n Russia waging war, China rattling sabers insisting they're going to take Taiwan and this might actually get worse. The biggest issue with China is the same issue Russia is facing right now....they very well might be able to take over the territory, but they "can't" have it as the only way they can take it over is to completely and utterly destroy it. The instant Taiwan gets invaded by China OR Russia expands their war into Moldova, Poland etc. forget it, shipping containers will be dumped of their contents and either instantly confiscated by the military for military use only and without a doubt many of them will be deemed to be SCRAP to be melted down for armaments. I don't believe people are taking this issue as serious as it really is as the likelihood of WWIII having ALREADY begun is actually better than a 50/50 proposition. People also fail to realize that this isn't something that's just beginning, it began to ramp up in earnest in 2017. You do the math.
I'd seriously buy what you can now because IF war breaks out in the S China sea, 95% of the ABDL diapers will be gone in an instant and there won't be any replacements until long after the war ends, the countries can rebuild their infrastructure, skilled employees are trained and taught how to do a totally different job than what they ever intended on doing for a living.....It's going to be horrific if this does in fact occur.
The above is an "educated" opinion who has friends in industry, friends in the military (several who are now high ranking individuals) and is a veteran himself. I do indeed hope I'm wrong and diplomacy either stalls the march to war or prevents it by some small miracle. I ask one favor... PLEASE do NOT make this political!!! I hate politics in general and especially hate the vile divisive opinions that have permeated American society in the past few years. I have friends on the right and left (I'm financially conservative yet socially liberal and have voted for both major party candidates as well as many independents) and when I hear my right wing friends make statements that "this country NEEDS a civil war" I snap and flip on them as they obviously fail to realize the disaster that would occur, the fact they'd be fighting their brothers, sons/daughters, some of their best friends and NO ONE wins, except the money men who produce the armaments AND finance all of the deals.....and you can GUARANTEE that NONE OF THEM will ever be involved in the fighting.
My apologies for this response kind of going off track...I've bee in indescribable pain for over a week, am sleep deprived and got into a heated argument over this exact subject tonight with one of my lifelong best friends as he sincerely feels a civil war in the US will somehow "magically" solve all problems AND make the country think like he does. The shame of this is that he too is a combat veteran though he didn't see any major action but was there and saw people die (Marines who died when a Scud missile hit their barracks in the 1st Gulf War)........ The truth is that all of these issues are intrinsically connected and directly related. What happens next is al dependent on our leaders (like them or not) being able to navigate these stormy seas without resorting to war although IF China OR Russia does the unthinkable, our hands will be tied and there will be but one possible response.
I pray what I wrote turns out to be way off base.
