(VOA News) SAN FRANCISCO —
Lockdowns of Chinese cities to contain the spread of COVID-19 are snarling imports and exports, according to economists. They say those hitches are slowly raising prices abroad while lowering demand in the world’s largest market for inbound merchandise.
The well-off port city of Shanghai, with a population of about 25 million people, began phasing in lockdowns last month as COVID-19 cases rose on their way to more than 200,000 as of Tuesday. Those restrictions followed the shuttering of China’s tech megalopolis, Shenzhen, in March.
Seaports in both cities have slowed because of a lack of workers and a quarantine on inbound crews of cargo ships from abroad, analysts said. Shanghai is the world’s largest container port and Shenzhen ranks fourth.
At Chinese factories, a backbone of the domestic and world economy, “limited” amounts of labor, plus suspended transportation, mean operators can “only rely on onsite inventory to barely meet the needs of production lines,” Taipei-based market research firm TrendForce said in an April 11 research note emailed to VOA… Read More
