ECON Inside America’s Broken Supply Chain How industry failures to collaborate and share information left the system vulnerable

[COMMENT: Article on website is rich with media accents]


Inside America’s Broken Supply Chain
How industry failures to collaborate and
share information left the system vulnerable

By
David J. Lynch
Updated Oct. 2 at 7:00 p.m.Originally published Sept. 30, 2021

REPORTING FROM LOS ANGELES AND JOLIET, ILL.
The commercial pipeline that each year brings $1 trillion worth of toys, clothing, electronics and furniture from Asia to the United States is clogged and no one knows how to unclog it.

This month, the median cost of shipping a standard rectangular metal container from China to the West Coast of the United States hit a record $20,586, almost twice what it cost in July, which was twice what it cost in January, according to the Freightos index. Essential freight-handling equipment too often is not where it’s needed, and when it is, there aren’t enough truckers or warehouse workers to operate it.

As Americans fume, supply headaches that were viewed as temporary when the coronavirus pandemic began now are expected to last through 2022.

Dozens of cargo vessels stuck at anchor off the California coast illustrate the delivery disruptions that have become the signature feature of the recovery, fueling inflation, sapping growth and calling into question the global economic model that has prevailed for three decades.

Today’s twisted supply chain is forcing companies to place precautionary orders to avoid running out of goods, which only compounds the pressure. Consumers are confronting higher prices and shortages of cars, children’s shoes and exercise gear, as the holiday shopping season looms.

“It’s going to get worse again before it gets better,” said Brian Bourke, chief growth officer at SEKO Logistics. “Global supply chains are not built for this.

Everything is breaking down.”

Fallout from the once-in-a-century health crisis is the chief culprit behind soaring freight bills and delivery delays. Americans trapped at home slashed spending at restaurants, movie theaters and sporting events and splurged on goods such as laptops and bicycles, triggering an import avalanche that has overwhelmed freight channels.

But the pandemic also exposed weaknesses in the nation’s transport plumbing: investment shortfalls at key ports, controversial railroad industry labor cuts, and a chronic failure by key players to collaborate, according to interviews with more than 50 individuals representing every link in the nation’s supply chain.

“It’s like an orchestra with lots of first violins and no conductor. … No one’s really in charge,” said Fran Inman, a Los Angeles-based commercial real estate executive who has advised government agencies on supply issues.

Port of Los Angeles
On Sept. 1, 40 container ships belonging to companies such as Hyundai, NYK Line and Evergreen were anchored off California, waiting for a berth. (Less than three weeks later, the number reached 73.) Some vessels sit for two weeks or more, effectively cutting capacity on trans-Pacific shipping lanes and driving up costs.

“From an economic point of view, it’s a disaster because cargo is waiting,” said Markus Grote, captain of a Hapag-Lloyd container ship.



For goods to move seamlessly from overseas factories to American addresses, the oceangoing vessels, shipping containers, cargo terminals, truckers, chassis providers and railroads all must work together, like runners in a relay race. If equipment gets stuck at any point, delays ripple along the entire chain.

Yet the United States is “decades behind” foreign ports in getting carriers, terminals and shippers to provide each other access to commercial data for planning purposes, said Gene Seroka, executive director of the Port of Los Angeles. Concerns over data privacy, business secrets and security have resulted in a fragmented approach. Individual ports operate as separate fiefdoms rather than as part of a national system.

In the Dutch city of Rotterdam, Europe’s largest port, everyone involved in a cargo vessel’s arrival sees the same information on a common data-sharing platform. Called “PortXchange,” the software makes port calls “smarter and more efficient” than the use of separate systems or the telephone, according to the port’s website.

Seroka touts a tool called the Port Optimizer, which forecasts three weeks of incoming cargo. More information sharing — including over a longer time period — would allow carriers, terminals, truckers and dockworkers to better position equipment and people. But other than Los Angeles, New Orleans is the only U.S. port that is even testing the system.

“Information sharing and additional transparency is one of the few areas where indisputably we could get more capacity out of the current system,” said Dan Maffei, chairman of the Federal Maritime Commission.

To be sure, the United States is importing historic amounts of goods. The L.A. port expects this year to handle a record 10.8 million containers. To keep pace, the International Longshore and Warehouse Union has accelerated training of new workers. Twenty union members have died of covid-19 while working through the pandemic, the union said.



“Our members are tired. Our members are feeling the pain of these covid deaths,” said Mike Podue, president of ILWU Local 63. “We’re lucky there hasn’t been a major accident.”

When the supply chain works, goods flow continuously, as if borne along by a river. Today, one bottleneck follows another. The problems are especially acute on the Asia-to-U.S. trade route.

Once a berth becomes available, longshoremen operating massive blue cranes lift the metal containers and position them to head inland via truck or train.

Ideally, a truck driver who has been alerted to the presence of a customer’s goods arrives at a terminal to find a chassis waiting. The container is then hoisted aboard and the driver pulls the chassis to the customer’s warehouse.

But too often, congestion elsewhere keeps the port jammed. Shippers with full warehouses won’t dispatch drivers to collect additional containers. Many loaded chassis sit outside overstuffed warehouses for days waiting to be unloaded, leaving ports short of needed equipment.

Why containers are stacked up at the ports of L.A. and Long Beach

Dan Walsh from TRAC Intermodal shows how a chassis is critical to keeping everything moving. (Lee Powell/TWP) https://d21rhj7n383afu.cloudfront.n...3924746e0fb000782999a/file_640x360-600-v3.mp4 1:27 min

Even as cargo piles up on the docks, almost a third of the port’s night-shift appointments for truckers go unfilled.

At APM Terminals, the largest container site in the Western Hemisphere, the air echoes with truck horns, air brakes and the warning beeps of mobile cranes.

This 484-acre facility boasts 12 miles of railroad tracks, linking the docks to points east for customers such as Walmart, Nike and Ikea. Across from the headquarters building, trucks wait to navigate canyons of containers stacked about 50 feet high.

Steven Trombley, the facility’s managing director, needs the agility of a hockey goalie to ward off the daily complications. Today, his berths are full and four of the ships loitering in San Pedro Bay are impatient for a spot.

Trombley has nearly a week’s worth of truck chassis on the dock. But truckers are scarce. Such mismatches help explain why containers destined to travel by rail sit dockside for an average of eight days, up from two before the pandemic.

“It’s a headache. Cargo is sitting here longer than planned,” Trombley said. “If I don’t get the cargo moving, then the next ship is not going to have space.”



Even as total federal ports spending has increased, the L.A. gateway has been neglected, Seroka said. West Coast ports, including the L.A.-Long Beach complex, which handles about 36 percent of U.S. imports, have lagged East and Gulf Coast facilities over the past decade, $11 billion to $1 billion.

With more money, the port could have expanded channels, fortified wharves and improved road and rail links, he said.

One shortcoming: The lack of a direct rail connection to the distribution centers for companies such as Amazon and Nordstrom 75 miles east in California’s “Inland Empire.” (Amazon founder Jeff Bezos owns The Washington Post.)

Advocates of a rail link say it would eliminate from Southern California’s freeways thousands of daily truck trips and ease port congestion by moving millions of containers off the docks. But the railroads doubt the financial case.

The backlog got so bad last fall that port officials opened overflow lots to store thousands of containers.

At Pier S, on the other end of a harbor island from APM, about 7,300 containers and chassis are parked. Some have been sitting for almost three weeks.

One of the facility’s users is TRAC Intermodal, the nation’s largest chassis operator. CEO Dan Walsh, a wisecracking Australian, said current supply snags reflect Americans’ greater reliance upon e-commerce.

“They expect things to come faster, which puts pressure on everyone in the supply chain,” he said. “They also expect to be able to return things without cost.”

TRAC has spent $1 billion over the past decade upgrading its 180,000-vehicle fleet for what Walsh calls “the permanent whitewater of daily work.”

The company has increased spending by 20 percent this year, adding models that boast GPS locaters, LED lights and anti-lock brakes. But expanding more aggressively to meet the cargo emergency would not be cost effective: new tariffs have made Chinese models unaffordable at a time when domestic makers struggle to fill orders.

As demand for shipping has soared, carriers have grown choosy about what they carry — eschewing hazardous chemicals and heavier products that increase vessel fuel costs. They often decline to send containers inland to collect American farm exports, preferring to rush them back to Asia to capitalize on high eastbound freight rates.

That’s why the L.A. port exports three times as many empty containers as full ones.



Part 1 of 2

Part 2 of 2

The seven largest publicly traded ocean carriers — including companies such as Maersk, COSCO and Hapag-Lloyd — reported more than $23 billion in profits in the first half of this year, compared with just $1 billion in the same period last year.

The soaring freight bills that fueled those profits, however, have put smaller shippers at a disadvantage to giants like Walmart or Amazon. The biggest companies not only can more easily absorb higher costs. They also negotiate more attractive contracts in the first place, which means they can reliably get their goods across the ocean while smaller companies struggle.

National Tree, a maker of artificial Christmas trees, was able over the past three months to import only half as many containers as planned, CEO Chris Butler said.
“We had contracts to bring in all of our containers. Those contracts were not worth the paper they were written on,” he said.

Warehouses are full, but truckers are in short supply

Tom McCoy from SEKO Logistics shows what's inside ocean containers, and how a driver shortage is causing a box pileup. (Lee Powell/TWP)

https://d21rhj7n383afu.cloudfront.n...39c9fd601800007190f43/file_640x360-600-v3.mp4 1:26 min

Supply interruptions first hit the United States in early 2020, as Chinese factories closed amid coronavirus shutdowns. Shortages of Clorox wipes, masks and other medical goods have evolved since then into a kaleidoscope of scarcity, with appliances, toys, industrial parts and semiconductors all proving hard to find.

Now, persistent cargo concerns are exposing the risks of ocean-spanning supply lines and hyper-efficient “just-in-time” production strategies that keep inventories and costs low.

A shortage of computer chips has shuttered General Motors and Ford auto plants and left Whirlpool scrambling to keep refrigerators and dishwashers in stock. Congestion in California prompted Levi Strauss to reroute Asian cargoes to less crowded East Coast ports despite longer, costlier journeys.

Cargo carriers are offering expedited VIP service for truly desperate shippers, some of whom offer to pay any price to get their goods moving.

Craig Grosscart, SEKO’s senior vice president for global ocean, said one desperate shipper recently asked: “Do you take bribes?”

Others have pleaded to use helicopters to retrieve containers from vessels offshore.

Long before the coronavirus, the United States lagged other major economies in moving goods efficiently. In 2018, the World Bank ranked the U.S. 14th out of 160 countries, down from ninth four years earlier, based on a periodic survey of freight forwarders and cargo carriers.

Likewise, regulators with the FMC warned in 2015: “Congestion at ports and other points in the nation’s intermodal system has become a serious risk factor to the relatively robust growth of the American economy and to its competitive position.”

Those earlier backlogs were sparked by unrest over a West Coast dockworkers’ contract. With that deal scheduled to expire July 1, businesses in coming months will probably order more than normal to avoid being caught short again, further aggravating congestion, executives said.


Seeler Industries in Joliet, a maker of chemical solutions used in household cleaners and municipal water treatment facilities, has been forced to turn down several million dollars in orders because of shortages of key ingredients and truckers to move them.

CEO Steve Seeler, who calls that a “significant” hit for his family-owned business, said he buys whatever materials become available for fear of missing out. Some imported chemical ingredients that once took six weeks to arrive now take up to three times as long, making just-in-time production “much more difficult, if not impossible,” he said.

Asked to describe his current strategy, Seeler said: “We’re praying. That’s what we’re doing.”

Union Pacific rail yard, Joliet, Ill.

One of the main rail routes leaving the port leads to Union Pacific’s Global 4 facility in Joliet, which sprawls across the equivalent of 500 football fields.

The rail yard is essentially an inland version of the terminals in Los Angeles. Like an industrial Lego set, the lot is replete with towering walls of orange, green, white and blue containers.

Last year, as the economy rebounded from its spring plunge, cargo arrived faster than it could be pushed out of the gate. This summer, the problem suddenly became acute, with nearly 8,000 containers clogging the paved ramp, roughly double the July 2020 figure, according to Union Pacific.

At one point, trains trying to enter the yard were backed up for 25 miles.

Frustrated truckers would drop containers at random spots, making it harder to navigate the narrow aisles and slowing operations. In late August, nearly all of the 5,500 parking spots were occupied by chassis or containers waiting to be picked up, leading to grumbling that shippers were using the yard as a warehouse.

“When things like this happen, the train can’t get loaded and we’re wasting hours of service,” said Thomas Moses, 49, a veteran locomotive engineer.

The struggle to keep the trains running on time

Union Pacific engineer Thomas Moses goes inside a locomotive cab, showing how fast trains with containers run. But freight volumes have crushed Union Pacific. (Lee Powell/TWP)

https://d21rhj7n383afu.cloudfront.n...466e0d601800007190f83/file_640x360-600-v3.mp4 1:26 min

The normal 3.5-day cycle for a chassis to exit with a container and then return for another pickup stretched to 17 days. That slowdown meant the facility would need an unimaginable 6,000 chassis for normal operations, up from its customary 1,000. Those delays, in turn, meant more train crews were needed.

That takes time to assemble and adds cost.

In July, Union Pacific took the extraordinary step of temporarily halting all trains arriving from West Coast ports. In Los Angeles, Seroka said he was informed of the decision just one or two days in advance.



Note: Federal and non-federal highway freight flow data as of 2015, the most recent data available

Sources: Transportation Department; Bureau of Transportation Statistics, Federal Highway Administration

The railroad also reopened another yard, Global 3, which had been closed in 2019 under a strategy known as “precision scheduled railroading,” to act as a relief valve. Used throughout the industry, PSR is “intended to benefit customers” by providing more predictable service, according to Union Pacific.

But union representatives and regulators question the associated job cuts. Union Pacific’s 31,000-person payroll is more than one-third smaller than it was in 2015, part of a broader shrinkage across all major railroads.

“You take that many people out of the workforce, I don’t see how it could but impact service,” said Martin Oberman, chairman of the Surface Transportation Board. “What’s happening is just stripping down the workforce.”


[In June, “cross-parked” containers started accumulating at Union Pacific's Global IV intermodal yard in Joliet, Ill., because drivers had nowhere to put them.

The railroad, in an unprecedented move, halted all container trains from the West Coast so it could clear the yard.

These containers often block four to five others from being picked up.
Source: Union Pacific Railroad ]

Global 4 has reopened to incoming trains at 75 percent of its previous volume. A planned doubling of capacity, with the introduction of five massive new cranes, is scheduled for next year.

Union Pacific says it has reduced the number of stockpiled containers. Managers have compiled pandemic lessons into a crisis manual known as “the playbook” and are hiring again.

Ongoing efficiency studies aim at additional fine-tuning. Already, the railroad is installing uniform signage at all Union Pacific facilities, so that truckers will see familiar instructions no matter where they go.

“We’ve got it fluid,” said Drew Steinkamp, general manager of the Chicago service unit. “But we’ve got a constant volume coming at us.”



Alvaro Ramirez has learned to be patient. Sitting in his green-and-white Freightliner truck, stuck in line for hours at cargo depots, the veteran driver listens to Conan O’Brien comedy routines, self-help audiobooks and tai chi lessons.

“It helps me breathe and calm down,” said Ramirez. “I used to be a screamer.”

He had good reason. Ramirez is almost 2,100 miles from the Los Angeles port, where dozens of ships wait offshore. But he confronts the same dysfunction.

With global supply lines in an epic snarl, it can take him five hours to enter a Chicago-area rail yard, locate a customer’s shipping container and mount it on a truck chassis before hauling it to its destination. Chronic rail-yard traffic jams last so long that he has learned salsa dancing by watching videos on his phone while waiting.

Before the pandemic, Ramirez, 44, could make seven round trips in an 11-hour workday. That number fell to just one or two, forcing him to switch to the less crowded overnight shift. Still, his earnings are down 20 percent.

Ramirez is a “drayman,” a 16th-century term for the final cog in the 21st-century supply lines that link the American heartland to Asian factories. His daily plight shows how today’s disruptions feed on themselves, like a line of tumbling dominoes.

At Road One Intermodal, which employs Ramirez and provides trucking services at nearly 90 ports and terminals, a truck was out of commission for more than two months while the company suffered its own supply chain woes, waiting for a new clutch.

Even as business boomed, executives opted not to order new truck cabs, after learning they could not be delivered until the end of next year. A shortage of aluminum and factory labor made the schedule for new trailers even more uncertain, said David McLaughlin, Road One’s chief operating and financial officer.

“This is my 46th year in the business. I’ve never seen anything like this and it’s not easily resolved,” he said.



In July, when two of the nation’s largest railroads restricted shipments from the West Coast to their Chicago hubs, they reduced the backlog of containers jamming their facilities but made port congestion worse.

As space aboard freight trains grew scarce, shippers switched to trucks, driving over-the-road freight bills up by 85 percent compared to April 2020, according to DAT Solutions.

But many logistics companies are reluctant to add permanent capacity, fearing they will be caught with too many ships, trucks or chassis (the trailer-like frame that holds the containers) once consumer buying patterns return to normal.

“You don’t build a church for Easter and Christmas. You build it for the average week,” said Jason Hilsenbeck, president of Load Match, an equipment clearinghouse in Naperville, Ill.

The supply chain ends at Bob Jones’s door in Tinley Park, Ill., more than 7,700 miles from the Chinese port of Ningbo, where many of his products originate.

The president of the American Sale retail chain is one of the smaller shippers buffeted by supply chain tumult. With eight stores in the Chicago area, Jones imports annually about 150 containers of pools and patio furniture. (Walmart, the nation’s largest importer, according to the Journal of Commerce, brings in several hundred thousand.)

Before the pandemic, the cost of shipping one container to his 200,000-square-foot warehouse was less than $5,000. In late August, the bill hit $26,000.

Some of his containers sit for two or three weeks once they reach Union Pacific’s rail yard or a similar facility belonging to rival BNSF.

Jones passes some of the higher cost to consumers and absorbs some himself. Since Americans have stocked up on outdoor products during the work-from-home era, he makes up some of his losses on volume.

The uncertainty is his chief worry. Kinks in the supply chain mean he has summer products arriving now when summer is a memory on the shores of Lake Michigan. More out-of-season goods will reach the Midwest as the snow flies.

“We have a typical supply chain route. This year, there’ve been hiccups all along the way,” Jones said. “It’s not getting better. In fact, I would say it’s getting worse.”

How supply chain woes could lead to empty shelves

https://d21rhj7n383afu.cloudfront.n...3ab4dd601800007190f4c/file_640x360-600-v3.mp4 2:19 min

Chicago-area retailer Bob Jones says he has outdoor wares like patio furniture at every stage of the supply chain. He's now worried about Christmas. (Lee Powell/TWP)

Now A U.S. Government Official Is Telling Us That The Supply Chain Nightmares Could Potentially Last For “Years”

October 11, 2021

The truth is starting to come out, and a lot of people aren’t going to like it.

When the supply chain problems and the shortages began, government officials repeatedly assured us that they would just be temporary, and most of us believed them. But now it has become clear that they aren’t going to be temporary at all. In fact, during a recent interview with Bloomberg, U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg admitted that some of the supply chain problems that we are currently facing could last for “years and years”. I don’t know about you, but to me “years and years” sounds like a really long time.

Of course that is not the only time that Buttigieg has made such a claim. During another recent interview, he used the words “long term” to describe what we are facing…

Buttigieg has said in recent interviews that “it’s an incredibly complicated situation,” but the government is holding virtual “roundtables” with port operators, labor unions and private companies.

Click to expand...

Nevertheless, he told MSNBC last Thursday, the “challenges” will continue, not only “going into the next year or two, but going into the long term.”

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Isn’t it remarkable how the outlook for our economic future has changed so dramatically in just a matter of a few months?

Earlier this year, we were told that we would soon be entering a new golden era of prosperity.

But now inflation and shortages are causing chaos everywhere we look.
Earlier today, I came across a Daily Mail article that boldly declared that “stores across America have empty shelves” right now…

Stores across America have empty shelves thanks to a series in supply chain problems that are prolonging inflation and could stretch into the new year, with some retailers like Costco and Walmart limiting the amount of toilet paper in some stores.

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More than 60 cargo ships are waiting to dock in California, carrying hundreds of thousands of containers, and may be stuck for months in a traffic jam after arriving from China and Asia. Millions of dollars of American goods are still sitting in warehouses in China, awaiting shipment.

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In addition to the unprecedented backlogs that we are witnessing at our major ports, it has also become far, far more expensive to send products across the Pacific Ocean.

Just check out these numbers…

The Washington Post reported the median cost of shipping a standard container from China to the U.S. West Coast hit a record $20,586. That’s nearly twice what it cost in July, which was twice what it cost in January, according to the Freightos index.

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“Consumers are confronting higher prices and shortages of cars, children’s shoes and exercise gear, as the holiday shopping season looms,” the Post said.

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That is crazy.

And now the emerging global energy crisis is going to make it even more expensive to move stuff around the planet. On Monday, the price of gasoline in the United States hit a new seven-year high…

The national average price for gasoline hit a fresh seven-year high of $3.27 a gallon on Monday, up by 7 cents in the past week alone, according to AAA. Gas has nearly doubled since bottoming at $1.77 in April 2020.

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High gas prices will only exacerbate elevated inflation, squeeze the budgets of American families and hurt President Joe Biden’s political fortunes.

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In addition, we just learned that U.S. stockpiles of heating oil have hit a 20 year low…

The U.S. may be heading into winter with the lowest stockpiles of heating oil to meet surging demand in more than two decades.

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Inventories of distillates — used as diesel for both transportation and heating oil — are enough to meet 31.2 days of demand, according to the Energy Information Administration. That’s the tightest it has been for this time of the year since 2000.

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Unfortunately, global energy supplies are going to get even tighter and prices are going to go even higher in the months ahead.

Needless to say, the big corporations are going to feel forced to pass on rising costs to consumers. In fact, the head of Kraft Heinz says that his company is already doing this…

Miguel Patricio said the international food giant, which makes tomato sauce and baked beans, was putting up prices in several countries.
Unlike in previous years, he said, inflation was “across the board”.

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The cost of ingredients such as cereals and oils has pushed global food prices to a 10-year high, according to the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation.

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If you are reading this article and you are thinking that this is perfectly setting the stage for many of the scenarios that I have described in my books, you would be 100 percent correct.

We are entering a period of inflation that is going to absolutely shock most people.

In fact, the UN says that the global price of food has already risen more than 32 percent over the past year…

The United Nation’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO)’s September food price index – a measure of monthly changes in global food prices – reached 130 points, a level not seen since 2011.
It represents a 32.8 percent increase from September 2020.

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I realize that I have thrown a lot of information at you very quickly in this article.
Things are starting to move quite rapidly now, and we are being warned that conditions are going to continue to deteriorate in the months ahead.

And as conditions deteriorate, the American people are going to becoming increasingly restless. Already, polls are showing that Americans are quite dissatisfied with the current state of affairs. Here is one example…

Just 37% of Americans rate the economy as very or fairly good – the lowest percentage since March, and for the second straight month, more than half feel the economy is in bad shape. And most Americans are not convinced that the Biden administration’s domestic agenda would improve the economy.

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As I discussed yesterday, our economy is starting to break down on a very basic level.

We have become so dependent on an efficient flow of goods and services, but these days there are breakdowns all over the system.

I would like to tell you that things will get better soon, but I can’t do that.
More supply chain problems are ahead, and some of them are going to be exceptionally painful.

There’s nobody smart enuff to fix it so I reckon it doesn’t matter how we got here.
We’re here.
Nobody’s gonna save us.

Business Insider
Nearly 80,000 shipping containers are piled high in the Port of Savannah, a report says, as the supply chain crisis shows no sign of stopping
Mary Hanbury
Mon, October 11, 2021, 8:22 AM·2 min read
Shipping containers piled high
Ports around the world are overwhelmed. Getty Images/Sasin Tipchai
The Port of Savannah is overwhelmed with shipping containers as the supply chain crisis continues.

There are nearly 80,000 containers stacked up on the docks, The New York Times reported.

The head of the Georgia Ports Authority said some ships were waiting for nine days before getting a slot.

The Port of Savannah, like other ports around the US, is approaching crisis point, according to a report by The New York Times.

It has nearly 80,000 containers - 50% more than normal - stacked up, and the person that oversees the port says he's "never had the yard as full as this."

About 700 containers have been left there for a month or more, per The Times. In September, 4,500 containers sat in the port for weeks, waiting to be collected by the trucks or boats that take them to their next destination, The Times reported.

These issues have become common in ports around the world.

After falling shipping demand in the first half of 2020, a surge at the end of that year led to delays, port traffic jams, and blockages across the supply chain. A lack of shipping containers and dock workers made it worse. Now, containers are getting jammed up in ports because of both rising demand and a continuing shortage of staff to unload them and take them to their destination.

Around the world, other containers are stuck at sea on ships that are waiting to find a spot in port. Insider's Grace Kay reported earlier in October that nearly 500,000 shipping containers were stuck off the coast of Southern California.

The traffic jam in Savannah shows no signs of easing up, Griff Lynch, who oversees the port and is executive director of the Georgia Ports Authority, said.

He has had to force some ships to wait at sea for more than nine days, and recently had more than 20 ships in a queue, he said.

"The supply chain is overwhelmed and inundated ... It's not sustainable at this point," he told The Times.

The fact 4,500 containers sat for weeks in September was "bordering on ridiculous," he said.

The immediate concern for the industry is dealing with supply chain issues ahead of the busy holiday shopping season. But experts say these issues are set to continue well into next year and beyond.

"There is no indication that it will get better by 2022," Dave Marcotte, longtime retail and supply chain expert from Kantar Consulting, said in a recent conversation with Insider.

"Things are really bad ... it's like a huge rubber band that keeps getting stretched further and further," he said.

marsh said:

As Americans fume, supply headaches that were viewed as temporary when the coronavirus pandemic began now are expected to last through 2022.

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Americans fume at the inconvenience? Are there any aware, outside of this forum of course, that China is at war with us?

The Spanish Flu picked off an army in WWI what do you think the intent of the Wu Flu is now?

More, and more money……
Chasing fewer, and fewer goods….

I’ve heard this somewhere before.

Pelosi: Congress must 'address' supply chain issues, which have a 'direct impact on everything'
In California, U.S. ports are reportedly operating at 60%-70% capacity.
Updated: October 12, 2021 - 11:07pm

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi says the U.S. government needs to intervene in the supply chain problems hurting the U.S. economy and the lack of manpower at U.S. ports.

In California, U.S. ports are reportedly operating at 60%-70% capacity. In addition, supply chain issues have delayed production of many types of products, including vehicles. Prices are rising, in part, due to the supply chain problems and inflation.

"As the global economic recovery continues to gather steam, what is increasingly apparent is how it will be stymied by supply-chain disruptions that are now showing up at every corner" of the economy, Moody's Analytics warned in a report Monday.

Dealers across the country are adding "market adjustment" fees on top of the retail price of vehicles as a result of the shortage of new cars on their lots.

The "shortages and delays have become a source of concern about fair competition," according to a New York Times report on supply chain problems during the pandemic heading into the holiday season.

Major retailers like Target and Home Depot are chartering their own ships as a way to get around the supply chain issues. The ships costs millions of dollars to lease, which is not a viable option for smaller-sized companies.

Pelosi, a California Democrat, was asked if the federal government is going to address the supply chain problems and the delays moving products at U.S. ports.

"The supply chain is not just an issue about what happens here," Pelosi said at a news conference at the Capitol on Tuesday. "The supply chain is an issue globally, and that was something we talked about at the meeting because there are obstructions in other countries of product, even making it to the ships to come to our country." Pelosi was referring to her meetings with foreign leaders at the G20 Parliamentary Speakers' Summit and the NATO Parliamentary Assembly.

"Yeah, we've got to address that issue because it has a direct impact on everything because we're so dependent on global trade and our trade going out as well," she added.

Interesting Facebook post in one of my Ag groups





posted comment:

California can suck a d**k.

that was quite the propaganda piece. there is a lot of intention in it.

Soooo, Uncle Joe says he has been working on the backlog for months. Now he is going to make the LA port start working 24/7. I would have thought that ports already work 24/7.

Have they been keeping bankers hours and we didn't know???

This and everything else that has to do with shortages of people running equipment, truck drivers and other jobs above the fast food jobs have a lot to do with the fact that the baby boomers are retiring. The younguns for the most part don't do this type of job they are computer jockeys.

It also shows how the "Green New Deal" will impact people as it's emissions and other regulations move from CA across America. Those trucks sitting in the yards may not just be waiting for parts. They may be mothballed waiting the elusive required electric truck.

[COMMENT: So VERY clueless]


Supply Chain Disruptions Force White House To Ask Walmart, UPS, FedEx To Increase Output

WEDNESDAY, OCT 13, 2021 - 06:45 PM
By Jack Phillips of Epoch Times,

Carriers of goods including Walmart, UPS, and FedEx are moving to work more shifts—including 24 hours per day, seven days per week—to address global supply disruptions that have contributed to a surge in inflation, the White House said Wednesday. The update was announced ahead of President Joe Biden’s meeting with the heads of Walmart, FedEx, and UPS to address the supply chain bottlenecks before the Christmas season.



According to a fact sheet released by the administration, Walmart said it would “increase its use of night-time hours significantly and projects they could increase throughput by as much as 50 percent over the next several weeks.”

Meanwhile, UPS said it would commit to use 24/7 operations “and enhanced data sharing with the ports” to move more containers out of ports, said the White House.

And FedEx, the fact sheet said, will “work to combine an increase in nighttime hours with changes to trucking and rail use to increase the volume of containers it will move from the ports.”

UPS and FedEx combined shipped approximately 40 percent of U.S. packages by volume in 2020, the White House said. A White House official told news outlets on Wednesday that FedEx, UPS, and Walmart will move toward a 24/7 working schedule.

Thousands of shipping containers at the Port of Felixstowe in Suffolk, England, on Oct. 13, 2021. (Joe Giddens/PA)
“Across these six companies over 3,500 additional containers per week will move at night through the end of the year,” said the fact sheet. “Those boxes contain toys, appliances, bicycles, and furniture that Americans purchased online or at their local small business, and pieces and parts that are sent to U.S. factories for our workers to assemble into products.”

Additionally, the Port of Los Angeles will move to 24/7 service, coming after the Port of Long Beach began similar operations several weeks ago, officials said.

The International Longshore and Warehouse Union also made a commitment to staffing 24/7, meaning that it will double the “hours that cargo will be able to move out of its docks and on highways,” according to the White House.

The supply crisis is driven in part by the global COVID-19 pandemic and potential vaccine mandates, as sales of durable goods jumped amid worker shortages and transportation hub slowdowns. Lower-than-expected Christmas sales could hurt U.S. companies and pose a political risk for Biden.

Thousands of shipping containers are on cargo ships offshore waiting to be offloaded at the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach. Similar backlogs exist at ports in New York and Savannah, Georgia. A shortage of warehouse workers and truck drivers to pick up goods is another reason for the bottlenecks.

Now A US Govt Official Is Telling Us That Supply Chain Nightmares Could Potentially Last For "Years"

WEDNESDAY, OCT 13, 2021 - 04:45 PM
Authored by Michael Snyder via The Economic Collapse blog,

The truth is starting to come out, and a lot of people aren’t going to like it. When the supply chain problems and the shortages began, government officials repeatedly assured us that they would just be temporary, and most of us believed them. But now it has become clear that they aren’t going to be temporary at all. In fact, during a recent interview with Bloomberg, U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg admitted that some of the supply chain problems that we are currently facing could last for “years and years”. I don’t know about you, but to me “years and years” sounds like a really long time.


Of course that is not the only time that Buttigieg has made such a claim.

During another recent interview, he used the words “long term” to describe what we are facing…

Buttigieg has said in recent interviews that “it’s an incredibly complicated situation,” but the government is holding virtual “roundtables” with port operators, labor unions and private companies.

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Nevertheless, he told MSNBC last Thursday, the “challenges” will continue, not only “going into the next year or two, but going into the long term.”

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Isn’t it remarkable how the outlook for our economic future has changed so dramatically in just a matter of a few months?

Earlier this year, we were told that we would soon be entering a new golden era of prosperity.

But now inflation and shortages are causing chaos everywhere we look.

Earlier today, I came across a Daily Mail article that boldly declared that “stores across America have empty shelves” right now…

Stores across America have empty shelves thanks to a series in supply chain problems that are prolonging inflation and could stretch into the new year, with some retailers like Costco and Walmart limiting the amount of toilet paper in some stores.

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More than 60 cargo ships are waiting to dock in California, carrying hundreds of thousands of containers, and may be stuck for months in a traffic jam after arriving from China and Asia. Millions of dollars of American goods are still sitting in warehouses in China, awaiting shipment.

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In addition to the unprecedented backlogs that we are witnessing at our major ports, it has also become far, far more expensive to send products across the Pacific Ocean.

Just check out these numbers…

The Washington Post reported the median cost of shipping a standard container from China to the U.S. West Coast hit a record $20,586.

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That’s nearly twice what it cost in July, which was twice what it cost in January, according to the Freightos index.

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“Consumers are confronting higher prices and shortages of cars, children’s shoes and exercise gear, as the holiday shopping season looms,” the Post said.

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That is crazy.

And now the emerging global energy crisis is going to make it even more expensive to move stuff around the planet. On Monday, the price of gasoline in the United States hit a new seven-year high…

The national average price for gasoline hit a fresh seven-year high of $3.27 a gallon on Monday, up by 7 cents in the past week alone, according to AAA. Gas has nearly doubled since bottoming at $1.77 in April 2020.

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High gas prices will only exacerbate elevated inflation, squeeze the budgets of American families and hurt President Joe Biden’s political fortunes.

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In addition, we just learned that U.S. stockpiles of heating oil have hit a 20 year low…

The U.S. may be heading into winter with the lowest stockpiles of heating oil to meet surging demand in more than two decades.

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Inventories of distillates — used as diesel for both transportation and heating oil — are enough to meet 31.2 days of demand, according to the Energy Information Administration. That’s the tightest it has been for this time of the year since 2000.

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Unfortunately, global energy supplies are going to get even tighter and prices are going to go even higher in the months ahead.

Needless to say, the big corporations are going to feel forced to pass on rising costs to consumers. In fact, the head of Kraft Heinz says that his company is already doing this…

Miguel Patricio said the international food giant, which makes tomato sauce and baked beans, was putting up prices in several countries.

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Unlike in previous years, he said, inflation was “across the board”.

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The cost of ingredients such as cereals and oils has pushed global food prices to a 10-year high, according to the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation.

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If you are reading this article and you are thinking that this is perfectly setting the stage for many of the scenarios that I have described in my books, you would be 100 percent correct.

We are entering a period of inflation that is going to absolutely shock most people.

In fact, the UN says that the global price of food has already risen more than 32 percent over the past year…

The United Nation’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO)’s September food price index – a measure of monthly changes in global food prices – reached 130 points, a level not seen since 2011.

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It represents a 32.8 percent increase from September 2020.

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I realize that I have thrown a lot of information at you very quickly in this article.

Things are starting to move quite rapidly now, and we are being warned that conditions are going to continue to deteriorate in the months ahead.

And as conditions deteriorate, the American people are going to becoming increasingly restless. Already, polls are showing that Americans are quite dissatisfied with the current state of affairs. Here is one example…

Just 37% of Americans rate the economy as very or fairly good – the lowest percentage since March, and for the second straight month, more than half feel the economy is in bad shape. And most Americans are not convinced that the Biden administration’s domestic agenda would improve the economy.

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As I discussed yesterday, our economy is starting to break down on a very basic level.

We have become so dependent on an efficient flow of goods and services, but these days there are breakdowns all over the system.

I would like to tell you that things will get better soon, but I can’t do that.

More supply chain problems are ahead, and some of them are going to be exceptionally painful.

Untapped Potential: Far Too Little Freight On US Waterways, Experts Say

WEDNESDAY, OCT 13, 2021 - 02:20 PM
By Nio Mahoney of FreightWaves,

Much of the U.S. waterway system’s enormous potential for commercial transport is going to waste for lack of use or funding, according to marine and trade experts.'

While most people are familiar with the importance of roads in transporting freight across the U.S., many have no idea that the more than 25,000 miles of navigable waterways — including rivers, canals and coastal routes — are just as vital.

“We have one of the world’s greatest waterway networks, but we are barely using it,” Joseph Linck, a Brownsville, Texas-based international trade and energy consultant, told FreightWaves.

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There are about 25,000 miles of navigable waterways — including rivers, canals and coastal routes — across the United States. Pictured is the Houston Ship Channel, which intersects with the Gulf Intracoastal Waterway.
Linck is founder and CEO of Globalstone LC and was the director of the Port of Brownsville in Texas from 1988-90. He’s currently working with a large investment bank that wants to start putting ocean shipping containers in hopper barges using inland waterways to offer the first long-haul container-on-barge service in the U.S.

The Intracoastal Waterway (ICW) is a 3,000-mile inland waterway running from Boston south along the Atlantic seaboard and around the southern tip of Florida, then following the Gulf of Mexico to Brownsville.

“Using the waterway, it’s a solution to the U.S. truck driver shortage, because one barge takes away 70-something trucks off the road and can move freight for less than half the price,” Linck said.

The U.S. waterway system consists of over 12,000 miles of inland waterways and 13,000 miles of coastal channels, 360 commercial ports, and 237 lock and dam chambers. The carrying capacity of barges far outpaces tractor trailers and railcars.



One barge carrying 1,750 pounds of dry cargo is equal to 70 tractor trailer trucks. (Infographic: FreightWaves)

The typical 15-barge tow is capable of hauling cargo totaling 22,500 tons, 767,500 bushels or 6.8 million gallons. That compares to six locomotives and 216 railcars, or 1,050 large tractor trailers.

Barges can move a ton of cargo 647 miles on a single gallon of fuel, and 514 miles on diesel fuel. That compares to 477 miles by rail and 145 miles by truck, according to a 2017 study by the Center for Ports and Waterways at the Texas A&M Transportation Institute.

The Texas A&M study was commissioned by the National Waterways Foundation, a Washington D.C.-based nonprofit that addresses public policy issues related to the U.S.’ inland waterways system.

The waterway transportation system has long contributed to the competitiveness of American agriculture by transporting grain domestically and for export, National Grain and Feed Association (NGFA) officials said in an email to FreightWaves.

Corn and soybeans are the most handled agricultural commodities in the Gulf Coast region waterways, along with wheat, distiller’s dried grains with solubles and soybean meal.

“Nearly 70% of U.S. agriculture exports (137.7 million metric tons valued at $108.2 billion) were waterborne in 2019. These exports provide 20% of U.S. farm income,” NGFA said. “In the same year, the U.S. exported nearly 30% of its grain.

Of this quantity, more than 50% was inspected through Mississippi River, about 30% was inspected through Pacific Northwest ports, and 5% through Texas Gulf ports.”

Paul Dittman, president of the Gulf Intracoastal Canal Association (GICA), said the waterway system is one of the safest and most efficient modes of transportation in the U.S.

“Every barge movement on our inland waterways within the Gulf Coast or any other inland waterway reduces significant amounts of truck traffic,” Dittman said.
GICA is a New Orleans-based nonprofit consisting of over 200 member companies primarily along the Gulf Coast. Its aim is to facilitate safe, reliable and efficient Gulf Coast waterways.

“The Intracoastal Waterway is the third-busiest inland waterway in the U.S. after the Mississippi and Ohio rivers,” Dittman said. “The differences on the Mississippi and Ohio River, you’re looking at about 70% dry bulk, 30% bulk liquid, whereas on the Gulf Intracoastal Waterway it’s just the opposite.”



Dittman said the ICW also provides the critical link between the U.S. petrochemical centers in Texas and Louisiana with the rest of the inland waterway system, as well as the entire Gulf Coast from St. Mark’s, Florida, to Brownsville, a distance of over 1,100 miles.

“For these reasons, the Gulf Intracoastal Waterway is often referred to as the silent giant,” Dittman said.

Petroleum products, chemicals, agricultural products, manufactured goods, coal and grains are the top commodities transported by U.S. waterways, according to the Army Corps of Engineers.

One of the biggest challenges for U.S. waterways is that historically, necessary upkeep such as dredging and infrastructure maintenance has been underfunded.

“Some of the limiting factors that we deal with include aging Army Corp of Engineers infrastructure, which can be problematic if they malfunction,” Dittman said.

One of the potential constraints to waterway transportation is the escalating volume of traffic at aging locks, the part of the waterway system that controls pool depths to make a channel deep enough for vessels to use.

Dittman said the Inner Harbor Navigation Canal Lock (IHNC) in New Orleans provides the only access to the Gulf Intracoastal Waterway east of New Orleans, creating a single point of failure if the lock is not available for navigation.

The IHNC was built in 1923. GICA is working closely with the federal government to begin the replacement of the IHNC, but this project will take several years to complete once initiated.

“It’s effectively 100 years old and is in need of replacement. We’re diligently working with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the local community to replace this aging piece of infrastructure with a new and larger lock,” Dittman said.

Some ongoing waterway projects that GICA provided input on include the $169 million Belle Chasse Bridge and Tunnel Replacement Project in Belle Chase, Louisiana, and two new bridges in Texas at South Padre Island and over the San Jacinto River along the Gulf Coast.

Like GICA, grain industry officials have been asking Congress for years to upgrade aging locks and dams on inland waterways.

NGFA officials and partnering waterways stakeholders said they are urging Congress to include funding for the Navigation and Ecosystem Sustainability Program (NESP) in final appropriations packages. NESP is an Army Corps of Engineers program dedicated to navigation improvements and ecological restoration for the Upper Mississippi River – Illinois Waterway.

“Congress first authorized NESP in 2007, but the program has not received any construction funding. Meanwhile, the vast majority of locks on the Upper Mississippi River and Illinois Waterway (UMR-IWW), built in the 1930s and 1940s with 600-foot chambers, have long-surpassed their design life,” NGFA said.

NESP would expand the navigation capacity along the UMR-IWW through the construction of seven new 1,200-foot locks and dams. New and modernized NESP locks would allow a 15-barge tow to pass through in just one lockage, increasing efficiency and boosting U.S. competitiveness.

“Building new locks on the UMR-IWW would spur job creation and help ensure that the U.S. remains competitive as a world grain exporter. For example, the U.S. is no longer the world’s top soybean exporter and key competitors continue to lower their transportation costs by investing in infrastructure,” NGFA said.

“Research from the Department of Agriculture suggests that unless significant improvements are made to farm-to-port infrastructure, U.S. world market share could decline an additional 3-6 percentage points, resulting in $1.5 billion to $3 billion in lost export sales.”

One infrastructure project that has received support is construction funding for a new 1,200-foot lock and dam (Lock and Dam 25) on the Upper Mississippi River, which has been included in both House of Representative and Senate versions of the FY 2022 Energy and Water Appropriations bills.

“This funding has broad bipartisan support from lawmakers up and down the Mississippi River and NGFA is hopeful it will be included in a final agreement on FY 2022 spending,” NGFA said.

While maritime experts work to replace aging locks and bridges along the waterway, the U.S. faces a $47 billion funding gap in infrastructure waterway needs over the next 17 years for navigation-related waterside improvements, according to an assessment issued in January by the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE).

“The inland waterways funding gap is almost entirely for lock and dam infrastructure, which is largely antiquated and prone to failure,” according to the 170-page “Failure to Act: Ports and Inland Waterways — Anchoring the U.S. Economy.”

The ASCE also graded 17 categories of infrastructure in March. The grades ranged from a B for rail to a D-minus for transit to a D-plus for inland waterways.

“We risk significant economic losses, higher costs to consumers, businesses and manufacturers — and our quality of life — if we don’t act urgently,” Thomas Smith, ASCE executive director, said in a statement.

Another issue facing the U.S. waterway system is declining demand for coal, which has historically been a big commodity on waterways but has been on a long downward swing as the U.S. slowly decreases its dependence on fossil fuels.

The Energy Information Administration reports U.S. coal shipments by waterways declined 20% in 2020 from 2019.

In 2019, more than $134 billion worth of cargo transited America’s inland waterways, equating to about 515 million tons, according to Waterways Council Inc.

Linck said the Intracoastal Waterway helped the Port of Brownsville get back to profitability in the late 1980s.

“We initiated new cargo steel and also Midwestern grain by river barge,” Linck said. “We started at the Port of Pittsburgh on the Ohio River and brought those barges down, all the way down to the Mississippi and down the Gulf Intracoastal Waterway from New Orleans to Brownsville.”

Linck said it’s possible the U.S. waterway system also has an image problem with modern-day logistics professionals. While moving commodities by inland waterways can be more fuel-efficient and less costly, it takes more long-range planning.

“We need to reeducate all our traffic managers, give them a little more power, get these MBA bean-counting managers off their just-in-time inventory control.

They can’t plan right, so they send everything on a truck. They just throw money out there and they get it where it needs to go, basically,” Linck said.

Port Of Los Angeles Prepares For 24/7 Operations To Tackle Massive Cargo Backlog

WEDNESDAY, OCT 13, 2021 - 10:29 AM

With more than 80 container ships at anchor and 64 at berths across the Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, congestion at the nation's top ports continues to snarl supply chains. To alleviate bottlenecks threatening the holiday shopping season, the White House has released a memo stating the twin ports will be operating on a 24/7 basis to counter the backlog.


The shipping industry is in complete chaos, and bottlenecks at Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, a point of entry for 40% of containers, continue to experience massive backlog that is disrupting the time it takes goods to reach store shelves, creating price inflation for consumer goods and shortages.

President Biden is expected to meet with "business leaders, port leaders, and union leaders to discuss the challenges at ports across the country and actions each partner can take to address the delays and congestion across the transportation supply chain," according to the White House.

"The President will meet with the leadership from the Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach and the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) to discuss the actions they are each taking to address these challenges in Southern California," the White House continued.

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To solve such a crisis, it appears the Biden administration, businesses leaders, and port officials will "announce a series of public and private commitments to move more goods faster, and strengthen the resiliency of our supply chains, by moving towards 24/7 operations at the Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach" at a press conference this afternoon.

Snarled supply chains first became an issue earlier this year for the administration when automakers began to experience production difficulties because of the lack of semiconductor chips. This forced Biden to announce a review of the problem in February.

Since then, the administration has done very little to alleviate shortages and bottlenecks as they push for more fiscal stimulus, one of the culprits of a massive demand-pull of overseas goods from Asia, straining logistical networks. The problem continues to worsen and adds inflation to the economy that is becoming more persistent than transitory. There's also the issue of consumer goods shortages ahead of the holiday season.

Here are the White House's commitments to resolve the shipping crisis:

The Port of Los Angeles is expanding to 24/7 operation. The Port of Long Beach expanded operations in mid-September. The Port of Los Angeles is now joining them by adding new off-peak night time shifts and weekend hours. This expansion means the Port of Los Angeles has nearly doubled the hours that cargo will be able to move out of its docks and on highways.

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The International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) has announced its members are willing to work those extra shifts. This will add needed capacity to put towards clearing existing backlogs. This is an important first step, now the private businesses along the supply chain need to move their operations to 24/7.

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Large companies are announcing they will use expanded hours to move more cargo off the docks, so ships can come to shore faster. Unlike leading ports around the world, U.S. ports have failed to realize the full possibility offered by operation on nights and weekends.

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Moving goods during off-peak hours can help move goods out of ports faster. For example, at the Port of LA, goods move 25 percent faster at night than during the day. These commitments will help unlock capacity in the rest of the system—including highways, railroads and warehouses—by reducing congestion during the day.

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The commitments being announced today include:

• The nation's largest retailer, Walmart, is committing to increase its use of night-time hours significantly and projects they could increase throughput by as much as 50% over the next several weeks.
• UPS is committing to an increased use of 24/7 operations and enhanced data sharing with the ports, which could allow it to move up to 20 percent more containers from the ports.
• FedEx is committing to work to combine an increase in night time hours with changes to trucking and rail use to increase the volume of containers it will move from the ports. Once these changes are in place, they could double the volume of cargo they can move out of the ports at night.
• Samsung is committing to move nearly 60% more containers out of these ports by operating 24/7 through the next 90 days. 72% of U.S. homes have at least one Samsung product, from appliances to consumer electronics.
• The Home Depot is committing to move up to 10% additional containers per week during the newly available off-peak port hours at the Ports of L.A. and Long Beach.
• Target, which is currently moving about 50 percent of its containers at night, has committed to increasing that amount by 10 percent during the next 90 days to help ease congestion at the ports.

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Across these six companies over 3,500 additional containers per week will move at night through the end of the year.

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Those boxes contain toys, appliances, bicycles, and furniture that Americans purchased online or at their local small business, and pieces and parts that are sent to U.S. factories for our workers to assemble into products. And this is just a start—these commitments provide a clear market signal to the other businesses along the transportation supply chain—rails, trucks, and warehouses—that there is demand to move additional cargo at off-peak hours.

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Secretary Buttigieg and Port Envoy Porcari will continue to work with all stakeholders to help more businesses access these expanded hours, and move the rest of the supply chain towards 24/7 operations.

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This effort is part of the ongoing work of the Biden-Harris Supply Chain Disruptions Task Force to continue to identify emerging bottlenecks to the economic recovery and take action to clear them to help families, workers, and businesses get the goods they need.

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White House ‘Cannot Guarantee’ Christmas Packages Will Arrive on Time
The White House
Video on website .46 min

CHARLIE SPIERING13 Oct 20211,630

The White House admitted Wednesday they were unable to guarantee packages would arrive on time this Christmas.

“We are not the postal service, or UPS, or FedEx,” White House press secretary Jen Psaki said. “We cannot guarantee. What we can do is use every lever at the federal government’s disposal to reduce delays.”

Psaki repeatedly posited that the government would work to solve supply chain issues, especially at American ports where ships are forced to wait in offshore traffic before they can get unloaded.


In an aerial view, container ships (Top L) are anchored by the ports of Long Beach and Los Angeles as they wait to offload on September 20, 2021 near Los Angeles, California. (Photo by Mario Tama/Getty Images)

She did not offer many specific actions the government planned to take, but admitted there were challenges facing the supply chain.

Psaki also could not offer a timeline for when the supply chains would get resolved or if shipping disruptions would get worse before it got better
“Look, I can’t make a prediction for you that we’re going to solve every issue tomorrow and next week. We’re not,” she said.


WASHINGTON, DC – OCTOBER 13: White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki speaks during the daily press briefing at the White House October 13, 2021 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images)

The White House proposed Wednesday long-term proposals to ease traffic at the ports, opening up the Los Angles port to 24/7 operations and supporting states to speed up licensing for truck drivers.

“We can’t overpromise here, and I’m not going to do that from here because there are a lot of issues in the supply chain,” Psaki said.

She acknowledged that Americans were suffering from high costs of food and products, but insisted that Biden was taking the issues seriously.

“A lot of these issues are not as simple as a one sentence explanation,” Psaki said.

Wonder if this is tied to the infrastructure bill? Or to % of vaxed people?

Throttle our good until we learn to play nice?

This is real and there are no parts to sustain the infrastructure. Your sewage and water suppliers can't get electrical components, pumps or treatment chemicals. Natural gas processors are having hell getting components too.

the MBA managers are still operating under pre covid accounting rules. They don't want to stock the spares and look surprised when shit gets deadlined.

They won't let the techs order extra parts when they are located either. The people that make the decisions have always taken for granted that the knuckle dragger hourly guys will fix it! Places I work are cannibalizing equipment to stay online.

Psaki was not born when the sh*t started going downhill.

Tree huggers and such caused the problems noted in all the above posts.

I worked with the Corps when TSHTF with the tree huggers etc. The river and lock system worked fine for many, many years.

SOBs with zero foresight and a lot of feelz ****ed up the system that was working smoothly at the time.

Let them have their GD windmills and solar bullshit.

I saw it and worked with it when it worked fine.

Go green my ass

Overstressed Cargo Ship Logjams Could Inadvertently Cause Communications Outage – Is Biden Prepared?

By Joe Hoft
Published October 14, 2021 at 7:00am

Guest post

We’ve been hearing a lot about the throngs of cargo ships backed up in the Pacific Ocean outside of the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach. Reports of up to 100 ships anchored in authorized anchorage areas and some just drifting under power outside of the authorized anchorage area are crowding the San Pedro and Santa Monica basin. We’ve reported on this recently.

The recent massive oil spill off the Orange County coast is suspected to be the possible cause of a cargo ship’s anchor dragging and gashing an oil pipeline line between the “Emmy” off-shore platform and the Long Beach refinery.

The 3 “official” anchorages off the coast are designed to handle 1-3 ships each while they wait for a berth at the LA and Long Beach ports. Currently, according to the website Marinetraffic.com, there are sometimes 8-12 ships in each of these anchorages and many more ships drifting under power just outside the anchorage areas. This area is under the 24-hour guidance of the Marine Exchange of Southern California (https://mxsocal.org) who, according to their website, “utilizes a state-of-the-art, comprehensive, computerized database system to provide vital statistics and information on ships calling at the four major ports in Southern California”.

Authorized anchorage areas are designed to avoid undersea hazards and assets such as oil pipelines and undersea fiber optics cables, but the excessive volume of ships and berth wait time could be causing a dangerous excess of the safe capacity of these near-shore areas.

The bulk of all of the world’s internet and voice data travels over undersea fiber optic cables. These cables are vulnerable to disruption risks including damage by dragging ship anchors. The US Director of National Security includes this risk in a September 2017 report called “Threats To Undersea Cable Communications”.

Some of these cables have onshore landing points in the same location as the oil pipeline. The Unity/EAC Pacific cable (owned by Airtel, Google, Singtel, and Telstra) comes onshore in Redondo Beach, CA and connects to Japan. The Jupiter cable (owned by Amazon Web Services, Facebook, NTT, and Softbank) comes onshore at Hermosa Beach, CA as does the SEA-US cable (owned by Globe Telecom, Hawaii Telcom, and RTI). The Southern Cross cable (owned by ASN and Fujitsu) connects the West Coast of the US with Hawaii, Australia and New Zealand and comes onshore at Morro Bay, CA, as does the Japan-US Cable (owned by AT&T, China Telecom, Singtel, NTT, SOftbank, T-Mobile, Verizon, Telstra and other). The Pacific Light Cable Network (owned by Facebook and Google) comes onshore at El Segundo, California and connects to the Philippines and Taiwan.

Undersea cable faults and ruptures have caused Internet and telecommunications outages all over the world, as recently as October 11 in Pakistan as reported by Insiderpaper.com

A report in Network World indicates that “internet-carrying cables are susceptible to cuts and are an accident waiting to happen”. Damage to one or more of these cables could cause catastrophic disasters, such as bringing down the global financial system or crippling a nation’s commerce functions.

When most people talk or think about the internet or the ‘cloud,’ they imagine that data is being transferred effortlessly through the skies or satellites.” “The reality is that 97 percent of worldwide communications is transmitted by the barely protected half-million miles of fiber cables lying on ocean beds.” They carry $10 trillion in financial transfers per day, claims study author Rishi Sunak.

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vestige said:

Psaki was not born when the sh*t started going downhill.

Tree huggers and such caused the problems noted in all the above posts.

I worked with the Corps when TSHTF with the tree huggers etc. The river and lock system worked fine for many, many years.

SOBs with zero foresight and a lot of feelz ****ed up the system that was working smoothly at the time.

Let them have their GD windmills and solar bullshit.

I saw it and worked with it when it worked fine.

Go green my ass

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I remember years ago (late 1990s) being invited to UMIMRA to give a talk on our experience as an ag community with the Endangered Species Act regarding salmon, and our innovative response. They had an endangered fish, I recall, that was going to affect the management of the upper river, the locks and barges, as well as the flood regime.

View: https://twitter.com/i/status/1448677830418526210
.19 min

[COMMENT: Wasn't part of the problem that the container stacking space was supposedly maxed out and the there weren't enough trucks/trains hauling them out?]

Truckers Warn Federal Regulators Of Drug-Testing Bottlenecks

THURSDAY, OCT 14, 2021 - 01:13 PM
By John Gallagher of FreightWaves.com,

A shortage of available drug and alcohol testing clinics, personnel and equipment threaten to unfairly ban truck drivers from the road, according to the Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association.
OOIDA warns drivers could be sidelined due to testing disruptions. (Photo: Jim Allen/FreightWaves)

In a letter sent to the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration on Wednesday, OOIDA President and CEO Todd Spencer said that disruptions affecting FMCSA’s testing system are causing “significant challenges” for drivers.

To remain compliant with federal drug and alcohol rules, drivers are required to submit to random testing. However, “increasingly, our association has experienced difficulties finding facilities to schedule and complete necessary tests for our members,” Spencer wrote to FMCSA Administrator Meera Joshi.

“Drivers have reported to facilities that lack equipment, like drug testing specimen cups, due to the current broader shortages of plastics. In other instances, facilities don’t have qualified personnel to administer the test. From what we have heard from testing facilities, these disruptions are due to the continuing impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic.”

Spencer explained that when drivers are notified they will be tested, they must immediately report to a testing site. But if issues at the collection site prevent the facility from completing the test, they cannot simply leave the site, even if a facility is unable to complete the required test. “This is because leaving the site could constitute a refusal, which has the same consequences as a positive test. As a result, a trucker would lose their ability to drive.”

FMCSA has acknowledged the clash between required random drug testing and disruptions caused by the pandemic. Last year the agency issued a discretion determination notice giving carriers some leeway if they were unable to comply with certain testing requirements caused by the COVID-19 emergency.

OOIDA did not immediately respond to comment on the extent to which its members have been stripped of their driving credentials, but it wants FMCSA to issue special guidelines or provide temporary relief to keep the problem from occurring. “FMCSA should also clarify what options are available to drivers when they encounter facilities that cannot complete tests,” Spencer stated.

“Furthermore, FMCSA should ensure that all DOT staff responsible for administering the drug and alcohol testing program are aware of these issues and can recognize them when they are reported. At a minimum, FMCSA must alleviate potential confusion that drivers may face by improving communication about these complications."

Biden White House Chief of Staff Believes Inflation and Supply Chain Crisis Are “High Class Problems”

By Cristina Laila
Published October 14, 2021 at 4:22pm

Ron Klain

White House Chief of Staff Ron Klain once again revealed just how out-of-touch the Biden Regime is with the common American.

Inflation was up 5.4% year over year in September – the highest rate in 13 years!
Prices rose 0.4% in Sept, up from 0.3% in August.

Gas, food, and goods continue to be key drivers of inflation.

Gas is up 42% since last year — the poor and middle class hurt the most.

Ron Klain on Wednesday evening agreed with Obama-era economist Jason Furman who claimed inflation and supply chain crisis are “high class problems.”

“Most of the economic problems we’re facing (inflation, supply chains, etc.) are high class problems. We wouldn’t have had them if the unemployment rate was still 10 percent. We would instead have had a much worse problem.” – Obama’s economic advisor and current professor at Harvard, Jason Furman tweeted.
Ron Klain endorsed Furman’s tweet.



The Biden Regime and DC media cabal is out-of-touch with middle America.
On Wednesday, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki brushed off inflation concerns like it was no big deal.

“We all understand the American people are not looking at cost-to-cost comparisons from this year to two years ago,” Psaki said.

Report: Supply Chain Crisis Impacting Grocers, ‘Shelves Were Bare and Nearly Empty’
18 WJXT
WENDELL HUSEBØ14 Oct 2021121

President Biden’s supply chain crisis is impacting grocery store’s ability to keep food on shelves and workers employed.

“Typically where shoppers can find snacks, canned goods, and pet food, the shelves were bare and nearly empty,” a Jacksonville news station WJXT reported.

“In Target, fruit snacks were limited, protein bars were nearly gone too, and Lunchables were low in stock,” the outlet said. “We saw the least amount of available frozen foods at Publix and snack foods like beef jerky were running low.”

“Both stores had limits on pet foods,” WJXT added.

CEO of the Michigan Pork Producers Association Mary Kelpinski told the Detroit Free Press the supply chain crisis is hurting suppliers’ ability to keep food on the shelves. “Nationally, our numbers are down,” Kelpinski said. “Demand is very good. Everyone wants bacon, but we have fewer pigs.”

The challenge of keeping food on the shelves for consumers comes as the supply chain is suffering from a deficit of labor primarily due to the federal government and Democrat-controlled state governments’ dispensing large unemployment benefits that outweigh private sector wages.

Natural Grocers Chairman and Co-President Kemper Isely told Supermarket News he increased wages to compete with unemployment benefits. Isley said:

Competitive pay, helping provide our Crew members a wage and benefits package that we believe is one of the best in the retail grocery business, is the most meaningful investment we can make,” Isely said.

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“When we can retain people who are aligned with our values and provide growth-oriented career opportunities, we are investing in our community as well.

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Natural Grocers also said the wage increases have been in place since the beginning of the Chinese coronavirus in March of 2020. “The initiative included a permanent $1 hourly wage increase for store associates, and the company said the incremental cost of the extra pay topped $18 million as of Sept. 30.”

As a result of Democrat policies that pay workers more money than the labor market can afford without raising prices, a Moody’s economist told the New York Post the price increases are impacting the average American family by about $175 dollars a month.

“For households earning the US median annual income of about $70,000, the current inflation rate has forced them to spend another $175 a month on food, fuel and housing,” the Post reported.

Meanwhile, the Labor Department estimated American workers and families are paying 5.4 percent higher prices than just last year before President Joe Biden spent nearly $5 trillion dollars in coronavirus stimulus. The department also marked the price for food at home as more than doubling in September from the 0.4 percent in August.

In the meet area of the grocery store, prices have increased double-digits since last year with steaks and roasts increasing more than 20 percent. Ground beef prices have also increased ten percent since last year.

Beef products are not the only proteins experiencing price increases. Pork products have also become more expensive, increasing 12 percent in one year.

Bacon, for example, is 20 percent more expensive than in 2020.

Supply Chain Issues Spook Consumers: Halloween Costumes, Decorations Hard to Find
8 Rawpixel/Getty Images
NICK GILBERTSON14 Oct 202141

Halloween decorations and costumes are becoming increasingly harder to find as supply chain issues plague the United States.

Major retail suppliers are already running low on supplies as cargo ships are log-jammed at California ports. Simultaneously, there is a shortage of truck drivers to supply stores, according to NBC 2.

Crissy Barchers owns the Halloween store Red Headed Witches in Cape Coral, Florida, and told NBC 2 that this year has been challenging due to supply chain problems:

We are very excited that Halloween season is here. We are under some crazy experience where shipping is a nightmare, getting product is a nightmare, our wholesaler can’t get product because the cargo ships are stuck waiting to unload and there’s no one to unload them. We didn’t even realize this was going to be an issue until mid to late September. By mid-September when all of our big Halloween initial orders started coming, sometimes it was half short.

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I am up like a mad woman every day checking the wholesaler, checking the availability just hoping that maybe they’re getting shipments in and I can jump on it. It’s a grueling process, but every day I’m on the computer, I’m making calls, I’m sending emails, I’m trying to find alternatives solutions just to get some new product. Right now you’re on a 7-10 day waiting list, so if I place an order today, they’re not even going to process it for 7-10 days. Then you have to factor in shipping, so this week is really the last week we can even order anything because by the time you factor in how long it’s going to take to get here, we could maybe have a box that shows up on Halloween.

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Twenty-seven-year-old Ben Wieber of Kalamazoo, Michigan, was unsuccessful in his search for a miniature haunted house to add to his Lemax Spooky Town collection, the Wall Street Journal reports.

“I went to Lowe’s, Home Depot, T.J. Maxx, HomeGoods and I’m already seeing Christmas stuff replace the Halloween stuff, which is ridiculous,” Wieber explained to the Journal. “I’m like, hello? Are we just skipping Halloween this year?”



In an aerial view, container ships are anchored by the ports of Long Beach and Los Angeles as they wait to offload on September 20, 2021, near Los Angeles, California. Amid a record-high demand for imported goods and a shortage of shipping containers and truckers, the twin ports are currently seeing unprecedented congestion. (Photo by Mario Tama/Getty Images)

According to the Wall Street Journal, Home Depot president and chief operating officer, Ted Decker, said this year’s Halloween pre-release sold out rapidly in an August earnings call.

Halloween spending is expected to reach an all-time high this year, the National Retail Federation (NRF) predicts, according to the Journal. Spending is estimated to exceed $10.1 billion this year.

The journal reports that the NRF surveyed 8000 consumers during the first week of September to see when they planned to buy Halloween essentials. Forty-five percent of respondents reported they planned to do their shopping before the end of September. Another 39 percent aimed to shop during the first two weeks of October.

Consumers who waited until October may be down on their luck when it comes to finding a fun costume or spooky decorations.

Spirit Halloween employee Kam Featherstone who works in the Layton, Utah, said the store was well-stocked during the month of September, the Wall Street Journal reports.

“[Our selection was] really good between the middle of September and the end of September,” said Featherstone. “Once October hit it was just gone, gone, gone.”

The company “experienced a few scares this Halloween season,” a Spirit Halloween spokesperson told the Journal. Such scares were rooted in product shipping delays and increased shipping costs.

On October 14, the Executive Director of the Port of Long Beach, Mario Codero, referred to the enormous backlog of ships off of the California coast as a “national crisis” in an interview with Yahoo Finance.

“This issue is a national crisis with regard to the supply chain and, for that matter, a global crisis,” Codero explained. “It’s rather complex, but on the other hand, I think we’ll start seeing some easing the container vessel wait time as we move toward the end of the year. This is peak season.”

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=njkl9t6jh8A
13:00 min

How supply chain shortages could lead to MORE CONTROL

Oct 14, 2021


Glenn Beck

Some on the far left now say supply chain shortages could continue for years and years to come. But that’s what they WANT, Glenn says. They want to use government to 'fix' the issue, therefore enacting more control over YOU. There’s a revolution happening now, but it’s being carried out by our elected leaders on the inside. From waking up to our current reality and denouncing all lies, Glenn explains in this clip what you can do to peacefully fight back…

Toy Company CEO Rips Biden’s Port Directive: ‘Too Little, Too Late’ — ‘A Political Gimmick’

JOSHUA CAPLAN14 Oct 2021202

Video on website 1:13 min

Appearing Thursday on the Fox News Channel’s America’s Newsroom, MGA Entertainment CEO Isaac Larian criticized President Joe Biden’s directive aimed at alleviating supply chain issues at U.S. ports, saying the move is “too little too late.”

A transcript is as follows:

ISAAC LARIAN: With all due respect to President Biden, what he just ordered is too little, too late. It’s only 72 days left until Christmas. Whether the ports are open 24 hours a day or 48 hours a day, you cannot get labor. If you cannot get labor, you cannot get trucks, you cannot get the merchandise out. And even if you get them out, it’s going to be too late for Christmas. This here, LOL Surprise Movie Magic, will be the number 1 toy this holiday. You can only get about 60 percent of the product demand out to stores. That means a lot of kids are not going to be able to get their LOL Movie Magic surprise under the Christmas tree or Hanukkah tree this year. I think this directive is too little, too late, and frankly, it’s a political gimmick to me.

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ANALYSIS: Where Are All The Truckers?

(Photo by Tim Boyle/Getty Images)

VARUN HUKERIGENERAL ASSIGNMENT & ANALYSIS REPORTER
October 14, 20216:46 PM ET

Trucks are a crucial part of the U.S. supply chain, transporting everything from food to machinery, but a commercial truck driver shortage is causing serious disruptions to the economy and beginning to hit consumers where it hurts.

Chris Thropp, president of the SAGE Corporation, said a nationwide truck driver shortage had become a problem for the industry even before the COVID-19 pandemic, according to CBS 21. A shortage of around 60,000 truck drivers was reported in 2019, but that number has since grown to around 100,000 this year.

“There are so many choke points in the supply chain,” Thropp said. “I don’t know that anybody really knows how long it’s going to take to unwind all of this and hope that it doesn’t grind to a halt.”

Trucks account for roughly 73% of the nearly 12 billion tons of freight transported across the U.S. each year, according to the American Trucking Associations (ATA). Around 8 million people worked in the sector prior to the pandemic, and job growth had been improving modestly from past years.



Trucks wait in line at the Port of Los Angeles, in San Pedro, California, October 13, 2021 (Robyn Beck/AFP via Getty Images)

But a dramatic increase in consumer demand that occurred during the course of the pandemic, coupled with sustained disruptions in labor markets and various sectors of the economy, has now led to an unprecedented shortage of commercial truck drivers.

“There is not a day that goes by that we don’t get a call from a trucking company saying we need drivers, and we’re increasing our pay and we’re making it better from a lifestyle standpoint trying to get people home,” Thropp said, according to CBS 21.

The labor market has become more chaotic in recent months as a record number of Americans are quitting their jobs. Roughly 2.9% of the workforce left their positions in August, or roughly 4.3 million people, according to a Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) report.

Chris Markowski, the host of the podcast “The Watchdog On Wallstreet,” told the Daily Caller News Foundation that the number of people leaving the workforce can be attributed to government benefits being paid to workers, including child tax credits and unemployment insurance that increased during the pandemic.



A now hiring advertisement appears on the back of a fuel trucks on April 29, 2021 in Richmond, California (Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)

Other experts told the DCNF that President Joe Biden’s new vaccine mandate for private companies with 100 or more employees is further hollowing out an already thin labor market.

But it’s unclear whether these policies, which appear to be impacting the retail and healthcare industries in particular, are having a considerable impact on the commercial truck driving industry.

Bruce Busada, president of a truck driver training school, told NPR during an interview Wednesday that wages in the trucking industry have grown since the pandemic. He noted that truckers today can make at least $60,000 a year in their first year, almost 30% more than the median wage of truck drivers in May 2020, according to the BLS.

“It’s gone up quite a bit,” Busada said of truckers’ wages. “And the benefits have always been there. They’ve had the benefits with the bigger companies. Even the local companies, they have benefits, 401(k)s and insurance and all that health insurance.”

Among the largest issues influencing the commercial truck driver shortage is the demographic trends of the current workforce. A significant cross-section of the industry’s labor pool is made up of older, male workers.


A man taking a break from driving at Ashford International truck stop on October 5, 2021 (Adrien Dennis/AFP via Getty Images)

The average age of a commercial truck driver in the U.S. is 55 years old, and only 20% of drivers are under 45 years old, according to the BLS. A large number of truck drivers will be retiring in the next 10-20 years, and the industry is struggling to hire younger workers, according to Redwood Logistics.

The trucking labor pool is almost entirely made up of men, as women account for just 7.8% of commercial truck drivers despite making up 47% of the nation’s workforce. Experts note the industry is only tapping into one-half of the population, potentially missing out on a larger pool of truckers.

“The industry has had a hard time recruiting females and younger people. And I think it’s just the image,” Busada said. “We’ve not done a good job of — you know, it’s not ‘Smokey The Bandit’ anymore. The trucks are really high-tech. They have a lot of safety features.”

Trucking companies are now offering more incentives to attract workers. Bonuses can reach up to $10,000 for some truckers, with major wholesale distributor Sysco offering $7,500 hiring bonuses, CBS 58 reported.


A truck driver passes stacked cargo containers at the Port of Baltimore in Baltimore, Maryland, on October 14, 2021 (Jim Watson/AFP via Getty Images)

“Some companies are changing hourly rates, some companies are increasing the mileage rate, some companies are doing hiring bonuses,” said Tom Bennett, secretary treasurer of the labor union Teamsters Local 200, according to the outlet.

“The baby boomers are leaving. They’re retiring. They’re retiring at a faster pace than the people coming into the industry,” Bennett emphasized.

But some experts think financial incentives won’t help address the trucking industry’s demographic hurdles, even after pandemic-era fluctuations in the labor market have receded, CBS 58 reported.

“We’re really not solving the shortage issue. We need to get more people into the industry,” said truck driving instructor Dan Zdrojewski, according to the outlet.

Financial Expert Dan Celia Warns of ‘Severe Food Crisis’

Maggie Donica |
Oct 14, 2021

Dan Celia, CEO of Financial Issues Stewardship Ministries, told the Todd Starnes Show listening audience “the next big crisis” is coming.

Celia believes that the critical lack of truckers and the shutdown of fossil fuel will lead to a significant food shortage.

“I will say that this could be the next big crisis that the administration wants,” Celia told host Todd Starnes Tuesday. “Between the border crisis and the supply chain crisis, we could see severe inflation and head into a much longer, very long-lasting severe recession.”

The host of Financial Issues revealed that the lack of truckers had caused a supply chain crisis. In addition, truckers suffering from wear down due to the number of trips they must make has become a global problem.


Starnes on Newsmax

Celia’s other concern is with the current administration attempting to shut down fossil fuel, making the transportation of crops more expensive. On top of the transportation costs, if fossil fuel is not produced, farmers will not acquire CO2, a key ingredient in fertilizer.

“We’re going to have a lack of food in general, and we’re going to have no way of getting it to the market, and when we do get it to the market, it’s going to be very costly,” Celia stated. “So, we’re going to have a lot of inflation with it. And that’s going to be a huge problem, a huge problem because people are going to panic.”

Starnes and Celia discussed the importance of stocking up on essentials and nonperishable foods in case of limited supply. The financial expert reminds listeners not to panic and stock up but to have extra essentials stored.

LISTEN TO TODD’S INTERVIEW WITH DAN CELIA BELOW:

Below is a rushed transcript from Dan Celia’s interview on the Todd Starnes Show Tuesday:

STARNES: I want to go right now to the Patriot mobile newsmaker line, and we were honored to have with us one of the smartest guys I know. He is the host of a massive radio program covering financial issues. Our good friend Dan Celia. Dan, good to have you back on the program today.

CELIA: Todd, it’s great to be with you. Who’s that smart guy, though? I’d like to talk to him about finances. I need some help.

STARNES: Financialissues.org is the website, folks. Dan, his syndicated radio program over 660 stations across the country. Dan, I want to jump into where we are in the economy right now, and many people are getting very concerned. I was out in California gas prices knocking on the $5 a gallon door, and I was at the supermarket just yesterday, and I noticed a lot of those shelves were not filled with products. What’s going on?

CELIA: Yeah, we’ve got a huge problem. Todd, it’s going to continue to be an inflationary problem, too, unfortunately. And you know, it’s there’s so many things all coming together at one time. So, you keep hearing about this supply chain problem that we have. We have bottlenecks all along the supply chain. But before this supply chain crisis happened, we had bottlenecks with a lack of truckers and by the way, that’s a global problem. I know that seems odd, but it is.

It’s a global problem. And now, globally, everybody’s worried about trucker burnout because there are so few drivers for so many runs, they’ve got to make.

So, we had that first, then we had this, then we started having the chip maker issues due to the pandemic. And the supply chains are just all bottleneck right now. And it’s a huge problem. Some are saying it’s going to last for another month or two. It’s going to last a lot longer than that.

Audio clip on website 1:56:36 min starts at 1:01:24 min

STARNES: You think so?

CELIA: Yeah, I think it’s going to be the best before we get a lot of relief is going to be the middle of the first quarter of next year. That’s how long it’s going to last. It’s too far going to get done very, very quickly.

STARNES: So, Dan, I was reading some reports over the past couple of days talking about how it’s going to be a dark Christmas. You’re not going to be able to get the gifts that your kids want is. I look at that and I think I’m more concerned with making sure we have food and things that you know, we need to survive in the supermarkets and stores.

CELIA: Yeah, I’m with you, Todd, because I’m much more concerned about that, and I’m glad you bring it up because right now, you and I are the only two people talking about it. It’s driving me crazy. I’ve been talking about it for a while. But we are going to have a severe food crisis. We going to have a crisis. I mean, we’ve got a couple of things going on because of the way in which this administration is trying to shut down fossil fuel. It’s causing problems around the globe. So, I’ll give you an example. Without producing that gas, we don’t get CO2. We need CO2, not just to make carbonated drinks. But it’s a very key ingredient in fertilizer. We must have it. So, we are already facing outlandish fertilizing prices around the world, and that’s going to get worse and continue to get worse. Now there are problems with crop protection, kinds of things like pesticides. The key ingredient in Roundup, which farmers have been using for 30 years, they’ll protect your crops. All that stuff coming in very, very short supply that is going, it’s not going to hurt yields this harvest. But next harvest, yields are going to start to decrease. Truckers are paying more money for fuel, so our produce and other products, particularly those cold shipments, are going up dramatically because of the cost of diesel fuel, and there’s a lack of them. So, we have two bottlenecks. We’re going to have a lack of food in general, and we’re going to have no way of getting it to the market, and when we do get it to the market, it’s going to be very costly. So, we’re going to have a lot of inflation with it. And that’s going to be a huge problem, a huge problem because people are going to panic. You know, we see, we have a Wal-Mart supermarket not far from us. I live in Florida now. We have a Wal-Mart supermarket market on Sunday afternoon, forget it, you can’t get anything. And the shelves are empty until Wednesday because again, getting them filled, getting the supplies there, so it’s getting longer and longer. Worse and worse. Different areas of the country are going to be affected differently.

Green beans, squash, strawberries, tomato, broccoli

Don't they all start going to market @ February? From Florida?

I could be wrong

Biden Begs OPEC and US Oil Companies to Pump More Oil as Prices Surge After He Cracked Down on US Production (VIDEO)

By Jim Hoft
Published October 14, 2021 at 10:02pm


Joe Biden’s first action as president after inauguration was to shut down construction of the Keystone Pipeline and eliminating an estimated.52,100 American jobs in the process.

Canceling the Keystone Pipeline costs over 11,000 construction jobs and 42,100 jobs throughout the US during the construction process according to the US State Department.

If you thought this was because they are principled leaders you would be wrong. Biden later approved a Russian pipeline and an oil pipeline to Hezbollah-controlled Lebanon.

Today oil prices in America are surging as a result of Joe Biden’s insane energy policies. The price of gas has spiked 42% in the last year.

It’s so bad that Joe Biden is urging OPEC and US oil companies to pump more oil and gas.

They want to destroy America.

Via Rob Schmitt Tonight.

Rumble video on website 3:07 min

So the general answer to the agenda is to throw "more" of something to solve everything.

Print more money = no more $$$ problems
Work more hours 24/7 = no more shipping, rail, transport problems
Need more oil, drill baby drill = no more gas problems

Steal elections = no more problems


See? They got it all figured!

What Supply Chain Crisis? Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg Has Been on Paid Paternity Leave Since August

By Kristinn Taylor
Published October 15, 2021 at 2:16pm

Secretary of Transportation has been on extended paid paternity leave since August, his office revealed Thursday night to Politico, finally answering the question of “Where is Mayor Pete?” that has been being asked as the nation has become mired in a supply chain crisis. Buttigieg and his husband Chasten became the parents of twins two months ago. A Buttigieg spokesman told Politico that while he is doing some work, Buttigieg intends to “continue to take some time over the coming weeks to support his husband and take care of his new children”

Pete Buttigieg posted a photo last month of the couple sharing a hospital bed while holding the newborns.


“Chasten and I are beyond thankful for all the kind wishes since first sharing the news that we’re becoming parents. We are delighted to welcome Penelope Rose and Joseph August Buttigieg to our family.”

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In mid-August Buttigieg announced he and Chasten had become parents, “For some time, Chasten and I have wanted to grow our family. We’re overjoyed to share that we’ve become parents! The process isn’t done yet and we’re thankful for the love, support, and respect for our privacy that has been offered to us. We can’t wait to share more soon.”

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Excerpt from Politico:

PETE BUTTIGIEG has been MIA.

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While U.S. ports faced anchor-to-anchor traffic and Congress nearly melted down over the president’s infrastructure bill in recent weeks, the usually omnipresent Transportation secretary was lying low.

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One of the White House’s go-to communicators didn’t appear on TV.

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He was absent on Capitol Hill during the negotiations over the bill he had been previously helping sell to different members of Congress.

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Conservative critics tried (unsuccessfully) to get #WheresPete to trend and Fox News ran a story on October 4 with the headline: “Buttigieg quiet on growing port congestion as shipping concerns build ahead of holidays.”

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They didn’t previously announce it, but Buttigieg’s office told West Wing Playbook that the secretary has actually been on paid leave since mid-August to spend time with his husband, Chasten, and their two newborn babies.

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“For the first four weeks, he was mostly offline except for major agency decisions and matters that could not be delegated,” said a spokesperson for the Department of Transportation. “He has been ramping up activities since then.” As he does that, Buttigieg will “continue to take some time over the coming weeks to support his husband and take care of his new children,” the spokesperson added.

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That ramp has been steep this week, as Buttigieg reverts to his “go everywhere” media habits.

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Since Oct. 7, Buttigieg has appeared on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” “MSNBC with Geoff Bennett,” CNN’s “New Day,” CNBC’s “Morning Bell,” Bloomberg TV’s “Balance of Power,” and the NPR Politics Podcast.

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He participated in virtual events to promote the infrastructure bill with the Commercial Club of Chicago and the Citizen Budget Commission of New York. He also attended a high-profile meeting with President JOE BIDEN Wednesday on supply chain bottlenecks…

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A port observer noted Friday morning that no signs of 24/7 trucking operations at the Los Angeles and Long Beech ports have been seen despite Biden’s announcement this week that the ports were moving to round-the-clock work hours.

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It's amazing how none of these things were really problems back in 2019.

What's different about now and 2019?

Hmmmm.....

The California Version of The Green New Deal and an October 16, 2020, EPA Settlement With Transportation is What’s Creating The Container Shipping Backlog – Working CA Ports 24/7 Will Not Help, Here’s Why

October 14, 2021 | Sundance | 573 Comments

Hundreds of requests for details on the specifics of the container shipping backlog. So, I spent 3 days calling sources, digging for details and gathering information on the substantive issue at hand. The epicenter of the problem is not what is being outlined by financial media, corporate media and politicians who have a specific interest in distracting from the issues at hand. This has nothing to do with COVID-19.

The issues being discussed today relate to events that happened a long time ago. As a matter of fact, it was so predictable that Amazon, Walmart, UPS, FedEx, Samsung, The Home Depot and Target all had taken actions years ago -long before COVID- because they knew this day would come. It was not accidental that those companies showed up at the White House to discuss the issue, because there’s now a full court press to hide it.

There is one very specific regional issue driving the problem. Read on:



The trucking issue with California LA ports, ie the Port of Los Angeles (POLA) and the Port of Long Beach (POLB), is that all semi tractors have to be current with new California emissions standards. As a consequence, that mean trucks cannot be older than 3 years if they are to pick up or deliver containers at those ports.

This issue wipes out approximately half of the fleet trucks used to move containers in/out of the port. Operating the port 24/7 will not cure the issue, because all it does is pile up more containers that sit idle as they await a limited number of trucks to pick them up. THIS is the central issue.

On October 16, 2020, the EPA reached a settlement agreement [DATA HERE] with California Air Resource Board (CARB) to shut down semi tractor rigs that were non-compliant with new California emission standards:

2020 SAN FRANCISCO – “Today, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced settlements with three interstate trucking companies imposing $417,000 in penalties for violating the California Air Resources Board’s federally enforceable Truck and Bus Regulation, Drayage Truck Regulation and Transport Refrigeration Unit Regulation.

“As trucks are one of the largest sources of air pollution in California, EPA will continue to ensure these heavy-duty vehicles have the needed pollution-control equipment and operate in compliance with the rules,” said EPA Pacific Southwest Regional Administrator John Busterud. “These companies have agreed to bring their trucks into compliance and operate more cleanly in all communities they serve.”

Transportation is a primary contributor to the high levels of air pollutants in Southern California and the Central Valley. Diesel emissions from trucks are one of the state’s largest sources of fine particle pollution, or soot, which is linked to health issues including asthma, impaired lung development in children, and cardiovascular effects in adults. Many of these trucks are older models and emit high amounts of particulate matter (PM) and nitrogen oxides (NOx).

[…] California Truck and Bus Regulation and Drayage Truck Regulation have been essential parts of the state’s federally enforceable plan to attain cleaner air.

California requires trucking companies to upgrade vehicles they own to meet specific NOx and PM performance standards and to verify compliance of vehicles they hire or dispatch. Heavy-duty diesel trucks in California must meet 2010 engine emissions standards or use diesel particulate filters to reduce the diesel particulates emissions into the atmosphere by 85% or more. (read more)
In effect, what this 2020 determination and settlement created was an inability of half the nation’s truckers from picking up anything from the Port of LA or Port of Long Beach. Virtually all private owner operator trucks and half of the fleet trucks that are used for moving containers across the nation were shut out.



In an effort to offset the problem, transportation companies started using compliant trucks (low emission) to take the products to the California state line, where they could be transferred to non-compliant trucks who cannot enter California. However, the scale of the problem creates an immediate bottleneck that builds over time. It doesn’t matter if the ports start working 24/7, they are only going to end up with even more containers waiting on a limited amount of available trucks.

Yesterday, in an effort to obfuscate and actually hide the epicenter of the issue, the White House put on a performance to provide political cover. In a grand pantomime, Joe Biden met with the heads of the Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach (Gene Seroka and Mario Cordero, respectively), and the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU).

The publicized meeting and White House conference was sold as Biden and Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg showing actions they are taking to address delays and congestion across the transportation supply chain in Southern California.

As a result of the meeting, the Port of Los Angeles (POLA) announced that it will join the Port of Long Beach (POLB) in expanding to 24/7 operations. POLA will add new off-peak nighttime shifts and weekend hours, nearly doubling its hours of operation. The ILWU said its members are willing to work those extra shifts to add needed labor capacity.

That publicly promoted action event was a complete political farce. No amount of extra productivity in working the docks to off-load ships will solve the issue of trucks that cannot pick up the containers and distribute them toward manufacturing or warehouses.

As I noted, the issue started becoming visible several years ago when the California Air Resource Board (CARB) announced the new environmental regulations. Several massive multinational corporations, with specifically in-tune supply and logistics operations, immediately recognized the issue they would face if 50+ percent of the trucking fleet would be blocked from entering California ports.

Yes, years ago the private sector predicted this would happen, and they started taking actions to protect their supply chains. What these massive corporations did to reduce their exposure to supply chain disruption was to immediately formulate plans to divert their goods to other ports. This was a very expensive shift in supply chain and logistic efforts for these massive corporations, which includes: Amazon, Walmart, UPS, FedEx, Samsung, The Home Depot and Target.

A long time before and during the era of the Trump administration, those massive multinational corporations knew they would need to redirect their import cargo quickly to avoid the bottleneck caused by California’s new emission standards. They began organizing new destination ports for their products and began setting up new hubs and distribution networks to avoid the predictable California port bottlenecks.

Obviously, for politically correct reasons; and in an effort to avoid the woke mob of environmentalist jackboots, the corporations didn’t publicly share any of the issues they could foresee coming – they just worked independently and quietly to avoid the issue.

However, it costs more money to move and entire supply chain for trillions of tons of goods coming. Hence, we saw prices climbing as a result of increased transportation costs being factored in to the new logistics. Did you hear about massive increases in container shipment prices? Well, THAT’S WHY. The entire supply chain from Asia to the United States was being modified from the closest port (California) to the ports where internal transportation would not be an issue.

Ships from China and SE Asia being diverted from California into the Gulf of Mexico or East coast have to go through the Panama Canal. It takes twice as long and costs twice as much, if not more. Hence, massive shipping price increases:



Unfortunately, small companies and small brokers of import goods do not have the control over their part of the supply chain from Asia to the West Coast. They don’t contract for entire cargo ships with thousands of containers. Those wholesalers, brokers and smaller companies that feed raw material and parts supplies to manufacturing and smaller retail outlets are stuck waiting for their containers to get through the trucking issue in California.

The bottleneck at the Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach run by Gene Seroka and Mario Cordero is not caused by a lack of longshoremen and dock workers to off-load the vessels. The bottleneck is caused by half of the previous trucks used to enter the ports and pick up containers not being allowed. Factually, it doesn’t make a tinkers damn worth of difference if the port works 24/7/365. The ports are simply running out of space.

The ports are running out of places to store containers full of goods that are getting off-loaded. Hundreds of thousands of them are piling up. The central issue is the inability of emission compliant heavy transportation in California to move those containers full of goods to manufacturing, warehouses and distribution points.

This California bottleneck has been building, and building and building for years, until now it has reached a crisis point.

If you want to know how long this has been taking place, take the time to watch this video of a trans-continental shipment belonging to Amazon Inc from China. As you watch this really good discussion, think about how long Amazon Inc. has known about the problem in order for them to have put such a massive solution into place in order to avoid California.

Yeah, this California emissions issue has been identified for years, and Amazon has been planning to avoid it for years. WATCH:

View: https://youtu.be/gsBIQIBavms
20:40 min

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=07zZOur_-hU
31:50 min
Biden SLAMMED As #BareShelvesBiden As Shortages WORSEN, Democrats Somehow Believe Economy Is GOOD

Oct 15, 2021


Tim Pool

Biden SLAMMED As #BareShelvesBiden As Shortages WORSEN, Democrats Somehow Believe Economy Is GOOD. As shortages rock pumpkins, turkeys, and Christmas trees, evidence is growing that our holidays may be upended. But republicans and independent voters are aware saying that the economy is very or fairly bad Somehow Democrats at 54% think the economy is fairly good. They refuse to accept that Joe Biden and Democrat policies is resulting in widespread shortages, labor market collapse, and a potential economic collapse outright. All the while Bitcoin is going up to insane