Unilever Plc and other big retail brands are among consumer giants adopting a toolkit to audit their shipping supply chains in an effort to help bring seafarers stuck on commercial vessels back home and eliminate human rights risks.

Europe was naive to outsource so much of its semiconductor design and manufacturing to other regions and needs to redress the balance, the European Union’s top industry official said.

Signs of inflation are picking up, with a mounting number of consumer-facing companies warning in recent days that supply shortages and logistical logjams may force them to raise prices.

Container shipping rates are heading higher again, driven to new heights by unrelenting consumer demand and company restocking from Europe to the U.S. that are exhausting the world economy’s capacity to move goods across oceans.

Containers piled high on giant vessels carrying everything from car tires to smartphones are toppling over at an alarming rate, sending millions of dollars of cargo sinking to the bottom of the ocean as pressure to speed deliveries raises the risk of safety errors.

U.S. companies face soaring bills for all kinds of materials that they need to do business — and surging demand is helping them pass on those higher costs to their customers.