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U.S. Companies Report Simultaneous Pressures from Fuels, Maritime Transportation, Tariffs, and Climate Events; Supply Chain Continues to Operate but with Higher Costs and Shorter Planning Horizons
The cost crisis in the United States is forcing business owners to reevaluate inventories, contracts, and even the duration of their purchasing plans. In some sectors, the previously two-year horizon has shrunk to just a few months, while diesel, freight, and raw materials face simultaneous pressures.
This situation has led executives surveyed in a study by the Institute for Supply Management (ISM) to draw a striking comparison: for some, managing a business in this environment is proving more complicated than during the COVID-19 pandemic.
The difference lies in the nature of the problem.
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During the pandemic, much of the supply chain simply came to a halt. Now, it continues to operate but alternates between periods of improvement and deterioration amid high energy costs, conflicts, navigation issues, trade tariffs, and climate events.
According to a report from CNN, published on September 20, 2026, Jack Buffington, the director of the supply chain program at the University of Denver, characterized the current landscape as a bigger problem than that faced during COVID, emphasizing the burden of energy costs in this new phase.
Diesel Prices Have Doubled Since March, and Energy Shock Begins to Impact the Entire Chain
One of the key indicators of pressure is the price of diesel.
According to CNN, fuel prices have doubled since March, amid escalating conflict in the Middle East and Ukrainian attacks on Russian refineries.
This trend is not limited to gas stations.
Higher diesel costs affect trucks, machinery, goods distribution, and various stages of the logistics chain. When this pressure coincides with increased maritime transport costs, the issue reaches companies that do not even purchase oil directly.
The core inflation rate in the United States, which excludes food and energy, also rose last month at the fastest pace since April, according to the report. Part of the concern is precisely in passing costs onto services, whose prices tend to be less likely to drop quickly after adjustments.
This detail makes the discussion broader than a simple temporary spike in oil prices: even if one source of pressure disappears, companies may still deal with costs that have already been absorbed into other stages of production and distribution.
Typhoons, the Red Sea, and Russian Diesel Transform Logistics into Another Pressure Point
Energy is just one of the fronts.
Consecutive typhoons practically halted activities at the Port of Shanghai, the world’s largest container port, for two weeks, causing subsequent delays in the international transport chain.
In maritime transport, companies are also facing security issues in the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden.
The resurgence of Houthi and Somali pirate activity has led shipping companies to reroute vessels and utilize longer routes around the African continent.
Ryan Petersen, CEO of logistics company Flexport, told CNN that these diversions have contributed to a 15% reduction in global maritime transport capacity in 2026. According to him, in 25 years in the industry, he has never seen a situation this severe.
There is also another component: Russia’s restriction on diesel exports.
According to the data cited in the report, the ban affected an amount equivalent to 12% of the world’s marine diesel supply.
The result is a crisis formed by several independent issues. Solving just one of them does not necessarily mean normalizing the others.
Company that planned coffee up to two years in advance now buys for just three to six months
In practice, the loss of predictability directly impacts business management.
Dilworth Coffee, a distributor based in Raleigh, North Carolina, used to schedule its coffee sources 12 to 24 months in advance.
Now, orders are being set with only three to six months of lead time.
The company was already facing an adverse combination.
A poor Brazilian crop in 2024 pressured future coffee contracts. Then came import tariffs, rising fertilizer prices, shipping difficulties, container shortages, and new uncertainties related to crops in Brazil and Vietnam.
With transportation costs rising, maintaining large inventories also requires more capital.
This is where the crisis begins to produce a less visible but significant effect: the company does not necessarily need to run out of raw material to suffer. It’s enough that it starts buying less, for shorter periods, and with lower margins because it cannot predict the cost of the next replenishment.
Sales that varied by 5% now fluctuate up to 20%
The problem has also reached demand.
According to the report from Dilworth Coffee’s CEO, Bryan Vojta, the company’s monthly sales volumes typically fluctuated by about 5%.
Now, this variation can reach 20% up or down.
At the same time, consumers and business clients pressured by inflation provide little room for new adjustments.
The equation gets tight: suppliers charge more, transportation costs more, inventory consumes more cash, and the end buyer resists paying a higher price.
Sean Brownlee, CEO of the American manufacturer Ravenox, summed up small businesses’ behavior by stating that they tend to absorb as much of the cost increases as possible before passing them on, but noted that the pressure has already become intense.
Brownlee started the company after a 25-year career in the United States Marine Corps with the intention of producing in the country and sustaining jobs in the U.S. industry. Now, according to his account, the unpredictability of the supply chain threatens this model.
Why business owners claim it may be worse now than during Covid
The comparison with the pandemic does not imply that the current economic shock has the same characteristics as it did in 2020.
During that period, ships sometimes waited weeks to access ports, while basic products temporarily vanished from shelves. Then, the supply chain began a gradual recovery.
Now the behavior is less linear.
Transport improves, worsens, becomes operational again, and then suffers another interruption. Prices decline, stabilize, and may surge again.
According to Brownlee, the supply chain continues to operate, but with higher costs, friction, and uncertainty than during Covid.
For a business owner, this difference is significant. A complete shutdown is devastating but allows one to know that operations are halted. A chain that operates with unpredictable costs demands continuous decisions about how much to buy, how much to stock, what to charge, and how much risk to assume.
It is precisely this lack of reference that repeatedly surfaces in business accounts.
End of a war alone would not resolve the cost crisis
President Donald Trump’s administration has argued that part of the inflationary pressure associated with the conflict with Iran may be temporary, and that normalizing the situation in the Strait of Hormuz would impact oil and gasoline prices.
There is recent precedent for this view: when the strait was briefly reopened in June, following a memorandum of understanding between the United States and Iran, oil prices fell below pre-war levels, and gasoline retreated to less than US$ 4 per gallon.
However, the current business landscape does not rely solely on Hormuz.
Russian restrictions on diesel, extreme weather, problems in major Asian ports, insecurity in the Red Sea, longer shipping routes, and trade tariffs continue to act simultaneously.
Therefore, even a drop in oil prices would not automatically mean a return to the previous business environment.
For companies like Dilworth Coffee, the change is already evident in their calendars: decisions that were previously made looking up to two years ahead now need to be reassessed within a few months.
The open question is not just when diesel and freight rates will fall again, but how much of this cost increase has already been permanently incorporated into production, services, and prices paid by consumers.
