[ryanmercer]

I've cleared international freight through Customs for a living for 15.5 years now, it's been interesting watching the reduction in electrical components coming in. It used to be that half or more of the shipments I would process a day would be integrated circuits/memory modules/resistors/capacitors. Now I'll see memory modules once a week, integrated circuits might be 5% of what I see a day, capacitors and resistors I'll see a few times a week now.

The value of the shipments is way way down too, instead of seeing a few hundred thousand dollars of ICs in a shipment, tens of thousands of ICs, I'll see tens of thousands of dollars of ICS in a shipment with the count in the thousands because, presumably, that's all that can be had.

I also notice HDD, SSD, and flash cards/USB storage imports seem to be way, way, down - presumably because they contain ICs as well.

[laydn]

Are you located in the USA?

What you say is somewhat surprising to me. I would imagine the total flow of components would be similar, but would be concentrated to certain destinations/buyers.

If cross-border trade of chips are actually in the decline, that suggests the components are being manufactured in lower quantities (highly unlikely), or they are staying close to and being consumed by (or, maybe hoarded and stocked at) where they are being manufactured.

[ryanmercer]

>Are you located in the USA?

Yes. I clear freight for IND, OAK, EWR, MEM and a few other ports.

> that suggests the components are being manufactured in lower quantities

Eh, to me it suggests people are taking delivery as soon as they can of whatever they can get and that factories are possibly giving more priority to companies in their own country over international customers.