"No one will bring production back to the US over this. "

I'm not so sure. It's been obvious for some time that corporations which have *all* of their supply chain sourced from China have a source chain which is at possible risk. Diversification is coming back on the table, and this would be a factor promoting it.

"Not to mention that you can't get a US production facility built in any shorter timespan than 18 months"

Depends on the product, and we do have unused capacity that's been mothballed. You can't assume that all production facilites would be new build.

"It's just another example of how free Markets don't operate how they're said to in simple Econ textbooks."

You sure? Free markets depend on their supply chains, and what the port bottleneck is exposing is shortsightedness on the part of the corporation depending on them.

Seems as basic a free market point as can be made. Government doesn't know how to run businesses, so we certainly don't want them (using the suggestions you're providing) facilitating shortsighted behavior on the part of the coporations.

That's the same shit we did with the banks in 2008.