## Into the Maelstrom

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**Canonical URL:** [Into the Maelstrom](https://www.imf.org/-/media/files/publications/fandd/article/2024/09/books-wellisz.pdf)

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### Summary of the book
- Title: HOW THE WORLD RAN OUT OF EVERYTHING
- Author: Peter S. Goodman
- Publisher details as given: Mariner Books, New York and Boston, 2024, 406 pp., $37
- Core focus: The collapse of global supply chains during COVID-19 and the human, economic, and logistical consequences that followed.

### Key narratives and characters
- Central anecdote: The travails of Hagan Walker, an entrepreneur trying to have an order of plastic toys shipped from a factory in China to customers in the United States in time for the holiday shopping season.
- Other human stories highlighted:
  - Sailors marooned aboard an idle container ship.
  - A California farmer unable to deliver almonds to customers in the Middle East.
  - A railroad worker denied paid leave to care for a sick child.
  - Workers in meat-packing plants declared essential during the pandemic, including an immigrant from Myanmar who “didn’t live to see her grandchild born.”
- Reporting style: Vivid storytelling and detailed, on-the-ground reporting from Shenzhen factories to Los Angeles and Long Beach ports, truck stops, and rail yards in the United States.

### Forces behind globalization and supply-chain fragility
- Factors chronicled as propelling globalization:
  - Economic reforms that unleashed China’s export-led economic transformation.
  - The invention of the shipping container, which “dramatically reduced the time and expense of moving goods across oceans.”
  - The concept of just-in-time manufacturing, which Goodman argues—“taken to extremes, made the world more vulnerable to supply-chain disruptions.”
- Role of management consultants: Counsel to corporate clients to slash inventories and payrolls in the name of lean manufacturing, portrayed as contributing to fragility.

### Villains, critique, and tone
- Principal antagonist in Goodman’s account: the “investor class,” whose “relentless pursuit of profit comes at the expense of consumers and workers.”
- Additional targets: management consultants and practices of “lean” operations.
- Tone balance:
  - Praise: Reporting described as “truly moving” in parts, bringing to light horrific working conditions.
  - Critique of author: Some denunciatory passages labeled “tedious” for repeated phrases such as “unregulated greed” and “cold-blooded exploitation.”

### Final chapters and policy recommendations
- Coverage: Quick survey of efforts at re-shoring and near-shoring.
- Conclusion and prescriptions (as presented in the book):
  - Goodman stops short of advocating the abolition of capitalism.
  - Calls for “stricter antitrust enforcement and stronger labor unions.”
- Overall ending: Characterized as pessimistic in Goodman’s analysis because he locates the root problem in the pursuit of profit.

### Assessment by the reviewer (Chris Wellisz)
- Overall judgment: A “gripping and enlightening account of one of the most consequential economic events of modern times,” told through the eyes of the people caught up in it.
- Reviewer affiliation: chris wellisz manages communications for the World Bank’s trade team.
- Highlighted praise: “Goodman’s gift for storytelling and eye for vivid detail breathe life into an inherently arcane subject.”

*SEPTEMBER 2024 — F&D — Chris Wellisz*

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_Source: https://www.imf.org/-/media/files/publications/fandd/article/2024/09/books-wellisz.pdf_