The Next Inflation Shock: Why Global Supply Chains Are Quietly Reigniting Price Pressures

Markets have spent most of 2025 pricing in a soft landing — slower growth, cooling inflation, and eventual rate cuts. But a new wave of supply shocks is quietly building under the surface. From shipping bottlenecks in the Red Sea to renewed energy tensions in the Middle East, the world’s “disinflation relief” may prove short-lived.

Recent data tells the story: Brent crude is back above $90, global freight rates have doubled since June, and food prices are rebounding as climate disruptions hit key exporters. Investors cheering falling CPI prints may be underestimating the lag between real-world frictions and the inflation data that follows.ening, but how quickly they will reshape the balance of global order.

Deglobalization has made inflation more cyclical, not less. The pandemic’s lesson wasn’t about resilience — it was about redundancy.

🔹 Friendshoring and dual sourcing have raised structural costs for manufacturers.
🔹 Energy trade routes are being re-routed around conflict zones, adding volatility to delivery schedules.
🔹 Commodity nationalism is tightening supply of key inputs like copper, lithium, and rare earths.

Each of these shifts embeds a new layer of price stickiness into global production — and as demand normalizes, these costs reappear in core inflation metrics.

Central banks can dampen demand; they can’t drill oil or unblock canals. The Fed’s tightening cycle has slowed consumption, but structural supply issues — shipping delays, labor shortages, and energy realignment — lie beyond its reach.

This creates a dangerous loop: policy overkill risks choking growth, while underestimating supply friction risks letting inflation expectations re-anchor higher. Either outcome complicates the “rate-cut by mid-2026” narrative that markets have priced in.

🔹 Brent crude and LNG spreads — energy is once again the inflation’s leading indicator.
🔹 Baltic Dry Index — a proxy for the next wave of global supply pressure.
🔹 ISM Supplier Deliveries Index — the earliest signal of renewed bottlenecks.

Positioning for disinflation may now be the crowded trade. The next inflation surprise won’t come from excess demand — it will come from a constrained world trying to grow amid fractured supply chains.

Investors betting on a dovish Fed may soon find themselves repricing not just rates, but risk itself.