Reopening economies put supply capacity of ports under pressure

This video is a good application of elasticity of supply - namely the capacity of some of the world's biggest ports to cope with surging demand as the global economy rebounds in 2021.

At some of the big ports, the number of days each container ship is delayed before unloading has climbed. Shipping costs are rising too as logjams worsen and eventually the price of this will get passed onto consumers.

Globalisation has caused a steep increase in maritime container ship trade over the past few decades, with the total volume growing from 4,000 million tonnes loaded in 1990 to more than 11,000 million tonnes loaded in 2019. The infographic below makes this clear (Source: Statista)