Whether it's microchips or cream cheese, the national supply chain shortage has affected everyone in some sort or fashion. From automobiles to electronics to everyday goods, it seems America is running out of everything.

"It's difficult when we can't get the things we need to produce the things that we do," said Bob Badowski, Chair of the School of Business at Westminster College. "For the car industry, we don't make any of the parts in the U.S, those parts come from elsewhere, so unless we get them and assemble them here, but if we don't have the parts we can't assemble them, that is why we are starting to see the shortage there as well."
 

Higher gas prices, labor shortages and pent up consumer demand have all led to the bottleneck in the national supply chain.

"If you think about traffic in a major city, it goes from six lanes to two lanes," Badowski said. "That is where we are right now, we're going from six lanes to two lanes and we need to somehow widen those lanes in order to get things quickly through."
 
Badowski doesn't see that happening anytime soon.
 
"I don't think it can feasibly come to an end, maybe end of the first quarter into almost the middle of next year. It's so bottlenecked right now."
 
Badowski says it's difficult to predict what will run out next, but says long term delays will likely continue for electronics and automobiles because of the microchip shortage.
 
Anything with the computer chips are going to be an issue," Badowski said. "In Thailand and Singapore and some of those countries that produce a lot of the things we use, they were hit hard by Covid and the Delta variant so their factories weren't up and running which is causing havoc as well so it's not just us in the United States, it's around the world and getting those things that we need. You don't realize how many chips are in lots of different things."
 
Badowski says as we enter 2022, look for Congress and President Biden to make this a focal point.
 
"I think you are going to start to really see Congress and the President really fix this issue, it's a major issue politically for them as well as for us everyday as we go to the grocery store and fill up our tanks so I think there is going to be a real concerted effort to fix this before the next elections."