One way to gauge just how transitory the current supply-chain challenges are is to look at the degree to which companies are spending to add more capacity. The third-quarter industrial earnings season kicks off next week with factory-floor distributor Fastenal Co. The theme will undoubtedly be logistical logjams and parts shortages, which have become materially worse since the last time ...

I have met Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg only once and it did not go well. It was at a dinner in July 2017, in the aftermath of Donald Trump’s presidential election victory, and controversy was raging about Facebook’s political role. I had the temerity to warn him that he increasingly resembled a cross between John D Rockefeller and William ...

Stuart Woolf, a large almond and tomato producer, recently bulldozed 400 acres of almond orchards in central California — about 50,000 trees that under normal conditions would have produced $2.5 million of nuts every year for another decade. It’s a fraction of the 25,000 acres his family farms, but razing the land was a necessary triage — “Like cutting off ...