This article was originally published by Michael Snyder at The Economic Collapse Blog under the title: “The Everything Meltdown”: Global Supply Chains Are Collapsing, And Most People Cannot Even Imagine The Pain That Is Coming

When global supply chains collapse, the pain is not felt immediately. Tankers that left their destinations before the war with Iran began are still arriving at their destinations, products that were manufactured prior to the war still fill our shelves, and we are still eating food that was produced last year. So even though global supply chains are collapsing all around us, most people don’t feel it yet. But if this war with Iran drags on for months, the pain that we will soon experience will be unbelievable.

Anyone who thinks that the global economy can continue to function at or near current levels without sufficient supplies of oil, natural gas, plastic, and fertilizer is just being delusional.

The only way that we can avoid “the everything meltdown” is if this war ends quickly.

Even if the Strait of Hormuz is reopened tomorrow, we will not see a return to pre-war conditions any time soon because damage that has been done to energy infrastructure in the Middle East will take years to fully rebuild.

With each passing day, the damage is getting even worse. For example, the biggest natural gas processing facility in the United Arab Emirates was just shut down following an Iranian attack…

Abu Dhabi’s Habshan gas facility, the UAE’s largest natural gas processing site, was shut down after debris from an intercepted Iranian missile caused a fire. The plant processes and distributes gas from the emirate’s fields for domestic use, making it a critical component of the country’s energy infrastructure. The attack comes amid a series of Iranian strikes on Gulf energy assets, including oil refineries and desalination plants in Kuwait, underscoring the vulnerability of regional infrastructure.

And just hours ago, the Iranians caused substantial damage at the Shuwaikh Oil Sector Complex in Kuwait…

An Iranian drone attack caused a fire at the Shuwaikh Oil Sector Complex, Kuwaiti authorities confirmed on Sunday morning.

The attack caused no casualties, the official Kuwait News Agency (KUNA) reported.

The facility hosts both the Kuwait Petroleum Corporation and the Oil Ministry’s headquarters, KUNA noted.

Over the past month, we have witnessed so much destruction to vital infrastructure, and it appears that the war is going to escalate to an entirely new level this week.

If President Trump follows through on his threats to destroy Iran’s power grid, the Iranians have warned that they will unleash unprecedented attacks on energy infrastructure all over the region.

One energy industry insider is warning that we are facing “sustained, compounding cost pressure across every industry”…

“This is headed toward sustained, compounding cost pressure across every industry that touches fuel, which is effectively every industry,” said Herman Nieuwoudt, president of IFS Energy & Resources.

Nieuwoudt says what we’re seeing right now isn’t a single price shock.

“It’s the consequence of the largest energy supply disruption in modern history layered on top of six years of structural volatility,” he said. “These disruptions cascade through manufacturing, packaging, agriculture, transportation, and retail in ways that take months to fully materialize,” he added.

He is right.

Literally just about everything is going to cost more in the months ahead.

Virtually our entire trucking industry runs on diesel, and at this point the average price of diesel fuel in the U.S. has reached a staggering $5.53 a gallon…

Diesel, widely used in farming, construction and trucking, among other industries, has risen even more sharply than gas, with the U.S. average this week hitting $5.53 a gallon, up from $3.64 a year ago, according to AAA.

This is survivable, but what are we going to do when it reaches 10 dollars a gallon?

Already, the average price of diesel fuel in San Francisco has surpassed 8 dollars a gallon…

For the first time on record, average diesel prices in San Francisco have surged past $8 per gallon, according to new data from GasBuddy—marking an unprecedented milestone for any U.S. city.

Maybe you don’t care about the price of diesel fuel.

But you should, because the cost of diesel fuel is going to be passed along to you.

Already, shipping companies are starting to impose very large fuel surcharges on their customers…

Citing higher energy costs, the United States Postal Service announced last month that it’s planning to impose an 8% surcharge on Priority Mail Express, Priority Mail, USPS Ground Advantage and Parcel Select services.

E-commerce giant Amazon also said that, beginning April 17, it plans to add a 3.5% fuel surcharge on third-party sellers, while FedEx and UPS have also recently introduced fuel surcharges, according to the Associated Press.

Stuff doesn’t just show up on your doorstep or in the stores by magic.

It takes fuel to move stuff around, and so all of the stuff that you buy on a regular basis is about to get more expensive.

And that is really bad news, because even before the war we were already in the midst of a historic cost of living crisis.

In many areas of the U.S., the price of a pound of ground beef is now higher than the federal minimum wage…

The cost of a pound of ground beef has hit a major threshold. Depending on where you shop, the grocery staple likely costs more than the federal minimum wage.

Money analyzed ground beef prices at seven of the most popular grocery chains across the U.S., finding that 1 pound of the typical 20% fat ground beef costs between $6.49 and $8.96. Organic, grass-fed and leaner varieties tend to cost much more.

On the other hand, the federal minimum wage sits at $7.25 per hour.

In 1988, you could get a pound of ground beef for about $1.30.

This is what happens when you destroy your economy.

And now the war in the Middle East is going to make things much, much worse.

Just about everything that we buy either contains plastic or comes wrapped in plastic.

Unfortunately, the war with Iran is severely disrupting global plastic supply chains…

Plastics are core to the modern economy, and a troubling new Bloomberg report indicates that several producers of monoethylene glycol (MEG) and purified terephthalic acid (PTA) have declared force majeure, as tanker flows through the Strait of Hormuz remain heavily disrupted.

For context, MEG and PTA are the two primary feedstocks used to produce polyethylene terephthalate (PET) and polyester fibers. These petrochemicals are critical to the production of everyday consumer goods that make life in the developed world convenient, including plastic bottles, food packaging, clothing, home furnishings, and a wide range of consumer and industrial goods.

More specifically, MEG is used in the production of polyester yarn, polyester staple fiber, PET resin, and PET film. It also plays a critical role in antifreeze, coolants, adhesives, coatings, and enamels.

In other words, MEG and PTA are foundational petrochemical building blocks for the modern economy. Any sustained disruption to these flows would be detrimental to the global economy.

I really wish that this wasn’t true, but our economy simply cannot function without plastic.

So what are we going to do now?

Every industry on the entire planet is going to be affected by the supply chain disruptions that are occurring.

In India, the textile industry has been “completely paralyzed” by this war…

Apocalyptic economic fallout. NHK confirms Trump’s disastrous war has completely paralyzed India’s massive textile industry. With 90% of their LPG imports choked off at the Strait of Hormuz, HALF A MILLION workers just lost their jobs. The global supply chain is collapsing.

If this war keeps going for an extended period of time, things will only get worse from here.

In other words, enjoy this moment, because these are the best conditions that we are going to have for quite a while.

Personally, I am more concerned about global food supplies than anything else.

According to the United Nations, the number of people around the world experiencing “acute hunger” was at the highest level ever recorded even before this war erupted.

Now farmers all over the northern hemisphere can’t get the nitrogen fertilizer that they desperately need because it is locked up in the Middle East…

Fertilizer is the link between energy and food. Natural gas is not just a fuel; it is the primary feedstock for synthetic nitrogen fertilizers through a process developed over a century ago called the Haber–Bosch method. Natural gas goes in, ammonia comes out, ammonia becomes urea, urea gets spread on cornfields in Iowa and wheat fields in Kansas and rice paddies in Asia. About 80 percent of nitrogen fertilizer production costs are attributable to natural gas. When the Strait of Hormuz is practically shuttered, you do not just block oil tankers and LNG carriers. You block the ships carrying urea and ammonia that the world’s farmers were expecting to receive this spring.

The numbers are sobering. The Persian Gulf region accounts for roughly a third of globally traded urea exports and approximately 25 percent of ammonia trade. Qatar’s state fertilizer company—QAFCO, considered the world’s largest urea supplier—shut down its plant when gas was cut. Saudi Arabia and other Gulf producers have seen exports stall. China, the other major global fertilizer exporter, has restricted outbound shipments to protect its domestic supply. These two supply sources together represent a substantial share of the global market, and both are simultaneously constrained.

For now, we are still eating food that was produced in 2025.

So everything still seems fine.

But in the not-too-distant future, annual crops such as wheat, barley, and corn are going to be much more expensive.

Meanwhile, crops that do not have to be planted every year, such as olives and grapes, will not be seriously affected.

Nitrogen fertilizer must be applied at the proper time, or it won’t work.

If the Strait of Hormuz opens up this summer, it won’t be possible to reverse the crop losses that we are facing.

We need the Strait of Hormuz to be opened immediately, but that simply is not going to happen.

Michael’s new book, entitled “10 Prophetic Events That Are Coming Next,” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com, and you can subscribe to his Substack newsletter at michaeltsnyder.substack.com.

About the Author: Michael Snyder’s new book, entitled “10 Prophetic Events That Are Coming Next,” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com.  He has also written nine other books that are available on Amazon.com, including “Chaos”, “End Times”, “7 Year Apocalypse”, “Lost Prophecies Of The Future Of America”, “The Beginning Of The End”, and “Living A Life That Really Matters”.  When you purchase any of Michael’s books, you help to support the work that he is doing.  You can also get his articles by email as soon as he publishes them by subscribing to his Substack newsletter.  Michael has published thousands of articles on The Economic Collapse Blog, End Of The American Dream, and The Most Important News, and he always freely and happily allows others to republish those articles on their own websites.  These are such troubled times, and people need hope.  John 3:16 tells us about the hope that God has given us through Jesus Christ: “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.”  If you have not already done so, we strongly urge you to invite Jesus Christ to be your Lord and Savior today.