Geopolitics and Empire is joined by Jack Buffington, who's Director of Supply Chain and Sustainability at First Key Consulting and Professor and Academic Director of the Supply Chain Management Program at the University of Denver.

He's the author of several books, including The Recycling Myth, Peak Plastic, and his latest just published, which we will be discussing, reinventing the supply chain, a 21st

century covenant with America.

Welcome to geopolitics and empire, Professor Buffington.

Yeah, thanks for having me.

Appreciate it.

Yeah, you noticed how we've almost got matching shirts, so that happens sometimes.

I guess we can thank the supply chain for that. But I've been reading

your book. I do very much enjoy it. And I think it's an important topic that we have to be looking

at more and more supply chains. We're talking about globalization, de-globalization, near-shoring,

reshoring in the face of

so many things that are going on, the pandemic, the Ukraine war, and decoupling from China.

And maybe a good place to start is to look at how great America used to be in manufacturing

and supply chain and how we lost it.

You discussed, you know, after World

War II, the U.S. economy was the largest globally with no other nation even close. And, you know,

how this relates to the actual war, where the government was afraid that with the end of the war,

with the end of the war machine economy, tens of millions of Americans would be put out of work.

They transitioned from government directed, command and control wartime economy to a new

consumer economy. So if you, you know, if you can sort of start us off there on how was America

before and then how we sort of, what happened and how we transitioned out of that?

Yeah, it's a, it's a great question.

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