The global economy’s supply crunch is propelling inflation at such a fast pace that central bankers may be forced to respond, even though fixing that imbalance is beyond their power.

Global ports are growing more gridlocked as the pandemic era’s supply shocks intensify, threatening to spoil the holiday shopping season, erode corporate profits and drive up consumer prices.

European Central Bank President Christine Lagarde warned that the globalized nature of the euro area’s economy makes it highly vulnerable to systemic shocks from supply chain disruptions.

When a fashion industry sustainability group called out China over its treatment of Uyghur Muslims, the idea was to nudge Beijing toward human-rights reforms while cleaning up a troubled corner of the $60 billion global cotton business. Western brands have learned the hard way that things don’t work that way in China.

China’s week-long holiday has exacerbated congestion at two of the country’s busiest ports — Shanghai and Ningbo — where hundreds of cargo ships are waiting to berth.

Tens of thousands of factory employees have gone back to their home villages from Vietnam’s southern industrial belt — and millions more are poised to follow — after months-long COVID-19 restrictions recently eased.

A Biden administration effort to untangle global chip supply snarls is facing resistance from lawmakers and executives in Taiwan and South Korea, complicating attempts to resolve the bottlenecks hurting industries from automobiles to consumer electronics.

The hit from China’s energy crunch is starting to ripple throughout the globe, hurting everyone from Toyota Motor Corp. to Australian sheep farmers and makers of cardboard boxes.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson said he won’t fall back on immigration to solve the U.K.’s truck driver shortage, as he presented supply chain troubles that have left supermarket shelves bare and gas stations dry as a “period of adjustment” in the wake of Brexit and the pandemic.

The U.S. and the European Union agreed to work together to shape the rules and standards around crucial technologies and coordinate their approaches to key trade issues at an inaugural meeting of a new cooperation body.