Jordan Strauss on The Future of Supply Chains

Duff & Phelps Institute Fellow Jordan Strauss joins the Center for International Private Enterprise’s (CIPE) podcast “Democracy That Delivers” to discuss the future of supply chains and the challenges that lie ahead as a result of COVID-19.

Jordan said, “One positive piece of humanitarian catastrophe like a pandemic or a really serious natural disaster is that it does garner both global regulatory attention and public support for zero tolerance of fraud.” However, he said that there are negative impacts of the pandemic that can lead to increased fraud and corruption, including the curtailed ability of enforcement agencies to move and investigate, a heightened risk of fraud due to economic desperation and the challenge of getting real, credible economic data.

When discussing COVID-19’s impact on supply chains, Jordan said there are three primary impacts: “The first is supply chain slowdowns and supply chain shutdowns. At the outset, countries were beginning to cut off exports of precursor materials so they could save them for themselves…Number two, the literal impact on supply chain logistics, which is that as people get sick, it is harder to move things around…Number three, I don’t know if this is a primary to secondary effect, but possibly politicized or other concerns voiced at a country level about contaminated surfaces and unknown transmissibility characteristics of COVID.”

Listen to the full episode here.