Oil at $120 is the headline, but the real story is what happens next: ships stop moving, insurance costs explode, fertilizer prices jump, and food inflation arrives right on schedule. We walk through the last month of fallout from the Iran conflict and explain why the Strait of Hormuz is more than a map detail. When a chokepoint that normally carries a huge share of global crude oil exports and LNG effectively freezes, the “price of energy” becomes the price of almost everything. 

We connect the dots across supply chain disruption and global trade: stranded or rerouted tankers, limited bypass capacity, higher freight rates, and the working-capital strain of longer voyages and bigger safety stock. Then we dig into the commodity layer, where fuel, fertilizer, and freight combine to raise landed food prices and intensify food security risk for importing regions. On the macro side, inflation expectations rise, rate cuts get postponed, equities sell off, and stagflation stops sounding like a history lesson. 

We also zoom out to the strategic questions driving the uncertainty: misjudged capabilities, unclear objectives, Russia’s leverage in higher energy markets, and why NATO politics and European legal constraints make allied alignment far from automatic. If you’re a supply chain leader, policymaker, or investor trying to plan under volatility, this conversation is a practical guide to what breaks first and what to redesign for resilience. Subscribe, share this with a colleague, and leave a review. What part of your supply chain feels most exposed right now?

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About Tony Hines and the Chain Reaction Podcast – All About Supply Chain Advantage
I have been researching and writing about supply chains for over 25 years. I wrote my first book on supply chain strategies in the early 2000s. The latest edition is published in 2024 available from Routledge, Amazon and all good book stores. Each week we have special episodes on particular topics relating to supply chains. We have a weekly news round up every Saturday at 12 noon. ...