YORK, Pa. (WHTM) -- Considering all the problems in the world, it's a high-quality problem: What do you do if the exact Harley-Davidson motorcycle you want isn't in stock and the dealer doesn't know when it will be?
A high-quality problem, sure, but still a problem.
"There are definitely supply-chain issues," said Pete Eisenhauer, who owns Eisenhauer's York Harley-Davidson.
The global shortage of semiconductor chips, otherwise known as microchips, is causing all kinds of problems -- high-quality and more dire ones alike.
"There's a shortage of pretty much everything," said Jay Shabat, publisher of Econ Weekly, "from labor to port capacity to materials to build homes."
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But behind so many of the other shortages is the microchip shortage. Why?
"They're really in everything," Shabat said -- especially anything "smart."
"Smart bombs, smart refrigerators -- that's all microchips behind that," Shabat said.
Disruptions in Taiwan and South Korea, where most chips are made -- even those made for the giant U.S.-based chipmaker Intel -- started about a year ago. Back then, companies hoped the situation would begin easing by about now. But the production problems didn't improve as quickly as industrial leaders hoped, and now there are new problems.
"There are important materials that go into semiconductors that are made in Ukraine," of all places, Shabat said -- the element neon, in particular, comes from there.
Shabat said the next opportunity to gauge when the situation might improve will be as publicly-traded companies begin reporting their first-quarter earnings in the coming days. Harley-Davidson's corporate office told abc27 News it couldn't comment for this story because of regulatorily-required "quiet periods," which cover all publicly-traded companies in advance of their earnings reports.
But "frankly, nobody knows for sure, because nobody expected two weeks ago that the city of Shanghai in China would be locked down right now," Shabat said. "Shanghai is a very important node in the in the global economy. It has a lot of factories there" including a new one manufacturing Tesla electric cars, he said.
As for Eisenhauer's York Harley-Davidson?
"It's a challenging time, but it also provides great opportunity," Eisenhauer said. "There is more demand, and people understand when there's a motorcycle available, it's time to buy it while they can get it."
What do consumers of all kinds of electronic products get, other than higher prices and less selection? Maybe a greater appreciation for what we can have.
"We have a great group of customers here in York," Eisenhauer said. "And and if they have to move from one color motorcycle because it's not available today, they've been very flexible in moving to a different color or a different combination, and they understand the overall environment."
Although this won't help anytime soon, Shabat said in the more distant future, a giant new multibillion-dollar Intel plant in Ohio could provide relief to American companies.
"Over the past, let's say, two or three decades, there's this sort of way of thinking among U.S. companies that 'we can make things more efficient and lower the cost of the goods that we sell by outsourcing some production overseas,'" Shabat said.
The new way of thinking?
"Maybe it's time to not worry so much about efficiency, but worry more about resiliency," he said.
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