It is possible, possible, mind you, that there is some light at the end of the supply chain tunnel.

From American public media. This is Marketplace.

In Los Angeles, I'm Kai Rizal. It is Tuesday, the 6th of December. It is always to have you along, everybody.

So let us review here as a way to get going. The long and twisted saga of supply chains in this pandemic economy the past two and a half years.

COVID hits, we start buying stuff, lots and lots of stuff. So retailers start scrambling to build up their inventories, both imported and domestic goods, so that they can meet that demand.

And then we start spending more on services, unless on stuff, which meant all that inventory had all of a sudden become excess, not an ideal state of affairs.

If you're a retailer, you don't want excess inventory. But we learned this week, thanks to something called the logistics managers index that inventories have finally come back down to where they were in the before times.

And as Marketplace is just in a whole reports to get us going, that is assigned supply chains are getting back to normal.

In the last few months, retailers have been using several strategies to try to get rid of all that extra inventory.

Says Zach Rogers at Colorado State University, who puts together the logistics managers index.

There's been large write downs. There's been a lot of good shifted into secondary market retailers like dollar stores or TJ Maxx and places like that.

And also there's been a slowdown in orders. And that slowdown in orders has had a knock on effect on supply chains more broadly.

Rogers says, look at what's happened to the price of shipping containers as demand for them is fallen.

The cost of a 40 foot container going from East Asia to the west coast of the United States is about $1,400 right now.

A year ago, that was close to $20,000.

It's also not taking as much time to import products. Pat Whalen handles imports at Sihadis, a grocery store and wholesaler in Brooklyn.

You're not over ordering ordering early anticipating that something that would take 30 to 60 days to get will take 90 to 120 days to get thinking like that anymore.

Whalen says that feels great.

I mean, it's been a long couple of years to have that other added pressure about dealing with supply. Now I feel like that's not much of an issue anymore.

But Whalen's not getting too excited and loading up on inventory.

Well, it's a cheaper freight rate. It'll be offset by the carrying costs of having the inventory paying for the inventory storing the inventory.

If the sales are not there to move the inventory through and the sales might not be there if the economy slows down next year.

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