Dara Orenstein on the Economic Geography of Warehouses

If you’re like many people throughout the country and world, you’ve purchased something on Amazon. As a result, you’ve been incorporated into a set of supply chain relationships that inevitably pass through warehouses. On this episode, we return to topic we’ve discussed in past episodes—how logistics shapes capitalism. We speak to Dara Orenstein about the history of bonded warehouses specifically and foreign trade zones. We consider how taxes, tariffs, and legal locations have been a critical component in many of the products we buy and make.

Dara Orenstein is an Associate Professor of American Studies at George Washington University. She is author of Out of Stock: The Warehouse in the History of Capitalism