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

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Shipping Containers from Stranded Ships Dumped in L.A. Neighborhoods

After spending weeks on ships stuck off the coast of the U.S., shipping containers are reportedly being dumped in nearby neighborhoods.

www.breitbart.com

Report: Shipping Containers from Stranded Ships Dumped in L.A. Neighborhoods

CBSLA
JACOB BLISS19 Oct 2021180

After spending weeks on ships stuck off the coast of the United States, shipping containers are reportedly being dumped in nearby neighborhoods.

Since the 24/7 operations of offloading cargo ships in Los Angeles and Long Beach ports have started, new problems arose, such as getting rid of the shipping containers used to transport goods. “Many of the shipping containers that spent weeks onboard ships waiting to be unloaded are now being dumped in nearby neighborhoods once they’re emptied,” CBSLA reported.

UCTI Trucking Company, located in Wilmington, California, only has the capacity of holding 65 containers, the report said. As a result of limited space, the trucking company has been lining the streets of the nearby neighborhood in front of the homes of nearby residents.

“It’s a bunch of neighbors that are very upset because it’s a non-stop situation,” said Sonia Cervantes, who lives on Anaheim Street, where the company is located. “I would have to go in at 6:30 a.m. to go to work. There was a trailer already blocking my driveway, so I couldn’t get out. With no driver in the trailer, so we would honk and honk, and it was just crazy.”

“They’re sitting in the street for like 15, 20 minutes. Sometimes they just unload the trailer in the street with no front part of it, and they just leave it there,” Cervantes added.

Owner of UCTI Trucking, Frank Arrieran, told CBSLA: “Right now with the ports and everything that’s going on over there, we’re stuck with the containers, having to bring them all to the yard, and we only have so much space.”

The local news organization spoke with U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, who said President Joe Biden’s administration is working to find short and long-term solutions to the continuing cargo ship crisis.”

Buttigieg told CBSLA:

There are so many pieces to the supply chain, and most of them are in private hands. But what we found is that the administration can act as an honest broker, and that’s what we’re doing, getting the different players together and securing commitments that are going to make a difference to get these goods flowing.

There are $17 billion in port improvements in the President’s infrastructure bill, and they’re urgently needed. This is one of the reasons why we’re eager to see congressional action, and I know my department is ready to put those dollars to work.

However, up until recently, Buttigieg’s whereabouts have been questioned while the crisis has been ongoing. Politico’s West Wing Playbook confirmed that Buttigieg was “lying low.”

“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,” Playbook reported.

While the secretary finds his way back to work amid the ongoing crisis, Arrerian, said his company is “doing everything they can to ease the congestion on the street” in addition to asking the surrounding residents to understand.

“We’ve been messed with tickets and being harassed,” Arrerian added. “We ask the community to help us because we’re only in the middle.”

 

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Washington Post on Supply Chain Woes: 'Try to Lower Expectations'

The Washington Post published an op-ed telling American consumers to "try to lower expectations" regarding the ongoing supply chain crisis.

www.breitbart.com

Washington Post: Americans Should ‘Try to Lower Expectations,’ Accept Biden’s Supply Chain Crisis
3

ABC 7
KATHERINE HAMILTON19 Oct 2021386

In what seems like an attempt to distance President Joe Biden from the supply chain crisis ravaging the country and the globe, the Washington Post — which is owned by Jeff Bezos, one of the richest men in the world — published an op-ed on Monday telling American consumers to “try to lower expectations” moving forward.

“Rather than living constantly on the verge of throwing a fit, and risking taking it out on overwhelmed servers, struggling shop owners or late-arriving delivery people, we’d do ourselves a favor by consciously lowering expectations,” Micheline Maynard wrote for the Post.



Maynard, who repeatedly used language comparing Americans to fussy toddlers, first asserted that Frederick Taylor’s The Principles of Scientific Management never took into account “the havoc a pandemic might do to supply chains.”

Following the typically accepted diction of far-left media, Maynard notably credited the disembodied “pandemic” for supply chain woes, rather than properly assigning blame to world governments that shut down economies and caused mass unemployment and disruptions in a largely failed effort to “stop the spread.”

She then argued “Americans’ expectations for speedy service” should be replaced by more “realistic expectations,” before quoting an Atlantic article in which the writer asserts that American shoppers have been “trained to be nightmares.” Notably, The Atlantic is also owned by Steve Jobs’ widow, Laurene Powell Jobs, who funds shady leftist activism around the world.

“The pandemic has shown just how desperately the consumer class clings to the feeling of being served,” Maynard quoted the author, who wrote before the supply chain crisis came to fruition.

Maynard then seemingly mocked Americans for questioning the massive and devastating inflation and supply chain failures that they are witnessing — problems which can significantly damage the lives of average Americans living paycheck to paycheck. Unlike the leftist elites, who can breezily drive their Teslas to the nearest Whole Foods for their vegan, dairy-free, gluten-free, leather-free, cruelty-free goods, supply chain problems and resulting inflation are a tax on everyday Americans. These same Americans, not necessarily plagued by an inability to frivolously shop, are instead troubled by finding toilet paper, filling their cars with gas to get to work, and paying for increasingly costly staples like meat and eggs. Maynard wrote:

Customers’ persistent whine, “Why don’t they just hire more people?,” sounds feeble in this era of the Great Resignation, especially in industries, such as food service, with reputations for being tough places to work. … All I can do is hope for the best. Like everybody else. And keep those expectations reasonable. Eventually the supply chain will get straightened out.

Maynard concluded by arguing that it is the current generation’s turn to grapple with “shortages of some kind” — as if the sufferings of yesteryear can be considered “status quo” and somehow give the world’s current leaders a pass for severe mismanagement. She unwittingly proceeded to compare the supply chain crisis to other examples of failed government leadership as reasons why Americans should except Biden’s current crisis. She finished with this:

American consumers might have been spoiled, but generations of them have also dealt with shortages of some kind — gasoline in the 1970s, food rationing in the 1940s, housing in the 1920s when cities such as Detroit were booming. Now it’s our turn to make adjustments.

In the 1970s, it was the Democrat leadership of former President Jimmy Carter that throttled inflation rates and led to the infamous gas lines. Food rationing in the 1940s was a symptom of World War II — a war which led to the deaths of tens of millions of people worldwide. Detroit, which has endured Democrat leadership since the 1960s, has, according to experts, decreased in home ownership as a result of overtaxation.

Many readers did not react kindly to Maynard’s postulation that supply chain disruptions and the resulting chaos should be accepted as part of “the new normal” — far-left CNN notably wrote in-kind, saying Americans shouldn’t expect to shop like pre-pandemic “before-times.” Experts have warned that the fallout from the supply chain crisis may continue until as late as 2023.

‘“Try to lower your expectations” is becoming the theme of Joe Biden’s America,” former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows replied in a tweet.



“Strong “Afghanistan is Your Fault” vibes. Corporate media really outdoing themselves under the Biden Administration,” tweeted Christina Pushaw, who is press secretary for Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R.





“We live in the greatest country on earth and I will not lower my expectations. They want us to compare America to Venezuela and judge by those standards,” Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO) tweeted.



Rep. Dan Crenshaw (R-TX) sarcastically compared the article’s assertions to something Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin would say.



‘“Don’t rant about bread lines and famine. Try to lower your expectations.” – Stalin, probably,” Crenshaw quipped.

Meanwhile, the Biden administration has struggled to deal with the crisis.

Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg convened a meeting on the cargo issue in July, but took two months’ of paternity leave, unannounced, in mid-August and only recently returned, Breitbart News previously reported.

On Tuesday, the backlog of container ships at the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach reached record highs, with 100 ships waiting to enter and unload.

 

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WATCH: White House Admits No 'Point Person' During Buttigieg Paternity Leave, Cargo Crisis

The White House on Tuesday continued to defend Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg for remaining on paternity leave.

www.breitbart.com

WATCH: White House Admits No ‘Point Person’ During Buttigieg Paternity Leave, Cargo Crisis

The White House / Youtube
Video on website 2:16 min

CHARLIE SPIERING19 Oct 2021973

The White House on Tuesday continued to defend Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg for remaining on paternity leave, as cargo ships wait outside the nation’s ports and the supply chain crisis continues.

Psaki claimed that Buttigieg was working, but would not say when he would physically come back to work in the Department of Transportation building.

Asked by Newsmax reported Emerald Robinson whether Buttigieg had left a “point person” in charge during his absence, White House press secretary Jen Psaki said Buttigieg’s work was being handled by a “range of officials.”

“There are a range of officials leading different components of the department of transpiration including the chief of staff, the deputy secretary of transportation, a range of officials who keep that place humming, functioning every day,” White House press secretary Jen Psaki replied, when asked about when Buttigieg would return.

The secretary took off two months of paternity leave, after he and Chasten adopted twin babies in mid-August. He plans to continue to take leave despite the controversy over his extended time away from work. Buttigieg convened a meeting about the cargo crisis in July, but it has only become worse.


A ship approaches the Port of Los Angeles, with dozens of other ships anchored in the background, October 18, 2021 (Joel Pollak / Breitbart News)

When asked by Robinson when Buttigieg would return to work, Psaki argued that “he’s at work.”

“I was on a conference call with him this morning,” she said.

She reiterated that the Biden Administration continued to support paid paternity leave, and that the Department of Transportation could operate smoothly while he was gone.

“We are quite confident in the capabilities the talents of the civil servants, the leadership at the Department of Transportation just as we are at companies across the country where women, men take maternity and paternity leave,” she said.

A recent Rasmussen poll showed that Buttigieg had only a 37 percent favorable rating and that most Americans believed he should return to work.

The survey of 1,000 U.S. likely voters was conducted on October 17-18, 2021 with a +/- margin of error.

 

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80,000 truck drivers wanted…

SOURCE The trucking industry is short 80,000 drivers, a record high, according to Chris Spear, President and CEO of the American Trucking Associations. That’s a 30% increase fro…

citizenfreepress.com

80,000 truck drivers wanted…
Posted by Kane on October 20, 2021 11:44 am


SOURCE

The trucking industry is short 80,000 drivers, a record high, according to Chris Spear, President and CEO of the American Trucking Associations. That’s a 30% increase from before the Scamdemic, when the industry already faced a labor shortage of 61,000 drivers.

“That’s a pretty big spike,” Spear added. Many drivers are retiring, dropping out of the industry. Increased consumer demand, prompting a need for more drivers, also plays a big role in the shortfall.

 

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View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1E7mjTXuDow
3:40:59 min

LIVE HEARING: Global Supply Chains and Small Business Trade Challenges

Streamed live 9 hours ago


Wake Up America Podcast

One of the nation's largest trucking and freight brokers, CH Robinson's CCO Chris O'Brian set to testify before the House Small Business Subcommittee on Oversight, Investigations, and Regulations on the ongoing supply chain crisis. This could be interesting. Consider signing up for a monthly membership on https://www.citizenstringer.tv to stay up to date on all of the day's hearings, news and opinion.

 

[marsh]

Zerohedge

ZeroHedge - On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero

www.zerohedge.com

"I Don't Remember A Time When So Many Extreme Events Were Happening In Shipping"

WEDNESDAY, OCT 20, 2021 - 01:57 PM
By Greg Miller of FreightWaves,

"I don’t remember a time when so many extreme events were happening in shipping," said Stifel analyst Ben Nolan, who has been covering the sector for the past 16 years.

Container shipping led the charge, with rates soaring to stratospheric highs. Dry bulk shipping rates jumped next, to levels not seen in over a decade. Now liquefied natural gas shipping has joined the party. LNG spot shipping rates “surged 40% in one day — Friday — on already high levels,” Nolan wrote in his weekly report.

Clarksons Platou Securities reported that benchmark spot rates for tri-fuel, diesel-engine LNG carriers were $157,500 per day on Monday, up 86% week on week. Rates for MEGI-propulsion carriers were $180,000 per day, up 65% week on week. Even rates for older steam-power LNG carriers are in six digits: at $110,000 per day, up 60% week on week.



Multiple segments, rhyming patterns
Shipping rates for containers, LNG and dry bulk are simultaneously high due due to parallel disruptions in supply and/or demand. No matter what the product or commodity, there’s domestic production, inventories and consumption on one hand and imports on the other. Abrupt COVID-era stops and starts of demand (and in the case of container shipping, cargo supply), compounded by other factors, have left inventories short in many categories, stoking demand for imports and thus ocean shipping.

In the container sector, warehouses are full and U.S. inventories overall are higher than pre-COVID, yet U.S. consumer demand has risen even faster, leaving inventory-to-sales ratios historically low.

In the coal and LNG sectors, high power consumption in Asia lowered stockpiles, with environmental issues and weather playing key roles in European and Asian shortfalls. In both container shipping and coal shipping, port congestion is constricting vessel capacity, a plus for rates.

There are connections between what’s happening in LNG, coal and container shipping. Some previously containerized goods are moving on bulkers. High manufacturing levels in China fueled by U.S. consumer demand have played a role in lower Chinese energy commodity inventories, supporting rates for LNG carriers and bulkers. Because LNG and coal imports can’t fill the gap fast enough, power shortfalls in China are slowing factory output, leading to longer delays and more inventory challenges for importers of containerized goods.

Yet another connection: Heavy ordering of container ship newbuilds has blocked yard slots and raised prices for newbuilds of LNG carriers, bulkers and tankers, which should limit vessel capacity and help support rates for non-container ships in the years to come.

LNG rates have room to run
LNG rates are widely expected to go even higher, as the winter peak is still months away. Spot rates topped $200,000 per day last January and one voyage was booked for a record $350,000 per day.

LNG shipping executives speaking during last week’s Capital Link New York Maritime Forum predicted that spot rates during the coming winter peak should be in the range of $200,000-$300,000 per day.


Charts: Clarksons Platou Securities. Chart data: Clarkson Research Services

LNG shipping is different from dry bulk and tanker shipping due to its much higher level of long-term charter coverage — a difference that became even more pronounced this year.

Richard Gilmore, executive vice president of Maran Gas, said during the Capital Link forum, “This summer and into the fall, a number of charterers [signed] multiyear charters, trying to shift away from spot exposure and trying to get away from having to pay very high rates during the wintertime.”

According to Oystein Kalleklev, CEO of Flex LNG (NYSE: FLEX), “Interest in doing term [long-term charters] rather than spot has been unique. We’ve never seen such a strong term market before.”

Karl Fredrik Staubo, CEO of Golar LNG (NYSE: GLNG), said that there are very few owner-controlled ships left in the spot market. “Most are relets,” he explained, referring to LNG carriers on long-term contract deployed in the spot market by charterers, not shipowners.

The same shift to long-term charters has played out in container shipping, where there are virtually no vessels left to lease short term. Rather than paying $200,000 per day to rent a container ship for one or two round-trip voyages, liners and operators are paying $40,000 per day to lock up ships for three to five years.

Are crude and product tankers next?
Crude and product tanker shipping have not followed the COVID-era pattern seen in containers, dry bulk and LNG shipping. One reason is inventories.

In contrast to what happened in other sectors, crude oil and product inventories surged to excessively high levels during the onset of COVID: on the crude side due to the collapsing oil price incentivizing floating and land-based storage, on the product side because refineries couldn’t ramp down fast enough to match collapsing consumption amid lockdowns.

Tanker rates suffered over the past year due to drawdowns of bloated inventories combined with OPEC+ production cuts and pandemic-induced losses to jet-fuel demand.

But oil inventories have now been drawn down, the price of crude is the highest it’s been since 2018, and shortages of coal and LNG should increase oil demand in the coming months. Will crude and product tankers belatedly join the rate boom seen in other shipping segments?

“Not all energy markets are equal, as the tanker markets are still struggling with oil demand that has not recovered to pre-COVID levels,” said Nolan. “However, there is increasing optimism that a seasonal tanker rally could materialize spurred by heating oil and fuel oil given the spillover from high natural gas and coal prices.

“Furthermore, the higher oil and gas prices are expected to drive more production from both OPEC and the rest of the world, making a 2022 recovery in the tanker market a seemingly foregone conclusion.”

 

[marsh]

Zerohedge

ZeroHedge - On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero

www.zerohedge.com

"People Are Hoarding" - Supermarkets Are The Next Supply Chain Crunch As Food Shortages Persist

WEDNESDAY, OCT 20, 2021 - 10:20 AM

It's been 19 months since the virus pandemic began, and supply chain disruptions continue, making it more difficult for customers to find their favorite item at supermarkets nationwide. Simultaneously, the psychology of empty store shelves and President Biden's inability to normalize supply chains forced some people to panic hoard this fall as uncertainty about food supplies mount.



Chris Jones, Senior Vice President of Government Affairs & Counsel of the National Grocers Association, told Today, "shopping early for the holidays is a wise strategy, especially under current conditions."

"There's plenty of food in the supply chain, but certain items may be harder to get at certain times due to a nationwide shortage of labor impacting manufacturers, shippers and retailers. Additionally, lack of enforcement of antitrust laws in the grocery marketplace have allowed dominant retailers to secure more favorable terms and ample supplies of high-demand goods while leaving many smaller retailers with limited selections or, in some cases, bare shelves," Jones said.

In a separate report, USA Today listed items that customers are having trouble finding at grocery stores.

Ben & Jerry flavors
This frozen treat is usually the perfect dessert, but in an email on Sept. 14, Ben & Jerry's parent company, Unilever, cited labor shortages as the reason for reducing the amount of flavors produced. The company said it will focus on producing its most popular flavors. Phish Food lovers, you have nothing to worry about.

Carbonated drinks
Fertilizer plants, which lead to the production of carbon dioxide, had to reduce their output because of rising costs, causing shortages in food and other products, Per Hong, senior partner at consulting firm Kearney, told CNBC. "We almost certainly will be faced with a global shortage of CO2 that is used widely. CO2 is used extensively in the food value chain from inside packaged food to keep it fresher longer, for dry ice to keep frozen food cold during delivery, to giving carbonated beverages their bubbles," he said.

Chicken
People have substituted fast food for home-cooked comfort meals, causing chicken to become scarce. In May, suppliers announced a shortage of chicken, which limited some restaurants' menu items and increased the price in stores.

Coffee
Brazil is a supplier of most of the world's coffee, but the country has been experiencing a drought that slowed production and transportation of coffee beans.

Diapers
Households with small children should be aware that diaper prices have increased because of increases in prices of raw materials, shipping delays and container shortages, according to Business Insider. Diaper manufacturers Proctor & Gamble (Pampers and Luvs) and Kimberly-Clark (Huggies) announced price increases in early April.

Fish sticks
A customs dispute at the U.S.-Canada border has kept the Alaska pollock, which is used for fish sticks and sandwiches, stored across the border. Cross-border violations have halted transportation of the fish and may cause permanent seafood supply chain problems.

Frozen meals
Rodney Holcomb, food economist at Oklahoma State University, told ABC27 News that concerns over the delta coronavirus variant have some customers buying more than usual, as Americans saw at the beginning of the pandemic, in case there is another lockdown.

Heinz ketchup packets
With restrictions on indoor dining, most people switched to pickup, takeout and delivery orders, limiting the supply of individual ketchup packets. Kraft Heinz confirmed to USA TODAY in early April that it was working to increase supplies, such as adding manufacturing lines that would increase production by about 25% for a total of more than 12 billion packets a year.

Marie Callender's pot pies
The holidays call for comfort foods – even if you aren't the one making it. But expect shortages of Marie Callender's 10-ounce and 15-ounce pot pies. According to parent company Conagra, it would be allocating shipments through Nov. 29 after it "encountered packing material challenges from our tray and carton supplier resulting in a production interruption," CNN Business reports.

McCormick Gourmet spices
With the holidays around the corner, meals being prepared across the nation may be missing a very important ingredient: seasonings. McCormick Gourmet spices are short of packaging supplies due to pandemic-related shutdowns. Lori Robinson, a spokesperson for McCormick, told CNN Business, "Gourmet is the only product line impacted by this packaging shortage" but can be substituted with their regular spices.

Rice Krispie Treats
This lunchbox treat's production has been "below service expectations," as stated in an email sent to suppliers. The shortage persists as Kellogg's workers remain on strike, even though production lines have restarted as replacement workers were brought in.

Sour Patch Kids
In an Oct. 1 email to a grocery distributor, parent company Mondelez says there is "limited availability" on some of their items such as Sour Patch Kids, Swedish Fish candy and Toblerone chocolate "due to supply chain constraints."

Toilet paper
This is something that isn't new to the pandemic shortage list, but the industry has yet to keep up with the demand. The shortage stems from lumber's raw material, wood pulp, which is used to make toilet paper. Fox Business reports only 60% of orders are being shipped out. Some retailers, such as Costco, have reinstated purchasing limits.

Persistent disruptions in supply chains continue to upended daily life as supplies of essential goods at grocery stores continue to dwindle.

"I never imagined that we'd be here in October 2021 talking about supply-chain problems, but it's a reality," Vivek Sankaran, CEO of supermarket chain Albertsons Cos., told Bloomberg. "Any given day, you're going to have something missing in our stores, and it's across categories."

Food suppliers are stocking up on extra supplies to mitigate panic hoarding. Saffron Road, a producer of frozen meals, is increasing inventory to about four months instead of two months.

"People are hoarding," said CEO and founder Adnan Durrani. "What I think you'll see over the next six months, all prices will go higher."

Food producers are also complaining about the challenges in the supply chain continuing and will unlikely wane by the end of this year, suggesting these issues will continue into early 2022.

Last week, one of the top trending topics on Twitter was the hashtag #EmptyShelvesJoe, referring to Biden's inability to normalize supply chains that have resulted in empty store shelves at supermarkets.

America is becoming more and more like a third-world nation as shortages and soaring food inflation crush the working poor.

 

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'Record High': Biden's Supply Chain Crisis Is Short 80,000 Truck Drivers

President Biden's supply chain crisis is short 80,000 truck drivers, President and CEO of the American Trucking Association told CNN.

www.breitbart.com

'Record High’: Biden’s Supply Chain Crisis Is Short 80,000 Truck Drivers

Mario Tama/Getty Images
WENDELL HUSEBØ20 Oct 2021428

President Biden’s supply chain crisis is short 80,000 truck drivers, President and CEO of the American Trucking Association told CNN on Tuesday.

Before the pandemic, the trucking industry was reportedly in need of 61,500 drivers, 30 percent less than in October.

“That’s a pretty big spike,” Chris Spear said, noting that some drivers are leaving the industry and retiring while shipping ports remain filled to capacity with containers.

The buildup of freight at the ports is likely due to a labor shortage spurred on by far-left policies of paying people not to work via large unemployment benefits.

Biden has taken notice of their poor economic polices by issuing an executive order last week to force ports to remain open 24 hours so truckers would have more time to remove the containers from the port. But many destinations to which truckers are delivering the freight are not open all night. Many warehouses, for instance, are not open to receive deliveries 24/7.

“24/7 operations – it’s an improvement,” Spear explained. “But it doesn’t matter if it’s a port in LA or Long Beach, or the last mile of delivery from a train to a warehouse in Wichita. You’re going to have to have a driver and a truck move that freight.”

After Spear threw cold water on Biden’s plan to fix the national supply chain crisis, he said what is needed are drivers to become employed in the trucking industry.


US President Joe Biden. (OLIVIER DOULIERY/AFP via Getty Images).

“I think that clearly is the most impactful thing that could be done right now to alleviate this problem. So next year, [we] are not going to be having this conversation because it will alleviate itself because we’re investing,” said Spear.

The trucking industry represents 71 percent of transported goods in the United States economy. Such a large percentage will increase, which could leave the American Trucking Association looking 1,600,000 new drivers by 2030, CNN revealed.

Meanwhile, Biden’s 24 hour port policy may not have had a positive impact and contributed to containers being dropped in residential neighborhoods. “UCTI Trucking Company, located in Wilmington, California, only has the capacity of holding 65 containers, the report said,” Breitbart News reported Tuesday. “As a result of limited space, the trucking company has been lining the streets of the nearby neighborhood in front of the homes of nearby residents.”

With trucking companies dropping freight in local communities and not at warehouses, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg has also been missing from his post. Buttigieg has taken paternity leave since since mid-August with his husband and two children.

The White House has defended Buttigieg absence while considering whether to deploy the National Guard to confront the crisis.

 

[marsh]

Gavin Newsom to the Rescue: Signs Executive Order on Cargo Crisis

California Gov. Gavin Newsom signed an executive order on Wednesday that, he claims, will address the cargo crisis.

www.breitbart.com

Gavin Newsom to the Rescue: Signs Executive Order on Cargo Crisis

Carolyn Cole / Pool / AFP / Getty
JOEL B. POLLAK20 Oct 2021272

California Gov. Gavin Newsom signed an executive order on Wednesday that, he claims, will address the cargo crisis at Los Angeles and Long Beach ports, which saw a record 100 ships at anchor Tuesday and has caused a nationwide supply shock.

The White House immediately celebrated Newsom’s executive order with a laudatory tweet from press secretary Jen Psaki:

However, it is not clear what, if anything, Newsom’s executive order will do to address the crisis, which is a result of high demand for imports; a shortage of dock workers and truckers; and storage and logistical problems at the ports themselves.



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. On September 17, there were a record total of 147 ships, 95 of which were container ships, in the twin ports, which move about 40 percent of all cargo containers entering the U.S. (Photo by Mario Tama/Getty Images)

Newsom’s order directs state agencies to “identify additional ways to alleviate congestion at California ports”; to “continue coordinating with the Biden-Harris Administration Supply Chain Disruptions Task Force”; and to consider long-term plans for better storage, transportation, and skills training. It also directs state agencies to “identify priority freight routes to be considered for a temporary exemption to current gross vehicle limits to allow for trucks to carry additional goods.”

The text of the order also touts California’s past investments at the Port of Oakland and its plans for zero-emissions trucks.

The cargo crisis has been ongoing for months, with U.S. Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg convening a roundtable on port congestion in July — shortly before disappearing for an unannounced paternity leave in mid-August, which continues.

 

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Poll: 37% View Pete Buttigieg Favorably, Majority Say He Must Work or Resign

Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg's (D) favorability is under water as just over a third of voters view him favorably.

www.breitbart.com

Poll: 37% View Pete Buttigieg Favorably, Majority Say He Must Get Back to Work or Resign

Drew Angerer/Getty Images

HANNAH BLEAU20 Oct 2021194

Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg’s (D) favorability is underwater as just over a third of voters view him favorably, while the majority say he should get back to work or resign after taking two months off for paternity leave amid the United State’s supply chain crisis, a Rasmussen Reports survey released Tuesday revealed.

Last week, it was revealed that Buttigieg had been on paid paternity leave since mid-August as the country’s supply chain woes worsened. The White House deemed him a “role model” for doing so, and on Tuesday, White House press secretary Jen Psaki defended the official for remaining on paternity leave even as U.S. cargo ships remain backed up on the U.S. coast.

“There are a range of officials leading different components of the department of transpiration including the chief of staff, the deputy secretary of transportation, a range of officials who keep that place humming, functioning every day,” Psaki said, adding that she was “on a conference call” with Buttigieg that morning. However, it seems he is still not physically at work.


White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki pauses while speaking during the daily press briefing at the White House, October 12, 2021, in Washington, DC. (Drew Angerer/Getty Images)

The survey asked voters:

Do you agree or disagree with this statement: ‘We’re in the middle of a transportation crisis, and Pete Buttigieg is sitting at home. Meanwhile, cargo boats are unable to dock and shelves are sitting empty. Pete needs to either get back to work or leave the Department of Transportation. It’s time to put American families first’?”

The majority, 65 percent, agree with the statement that Buttigieg should either get back to work or leave his post. Of those, 48 percent “strongly” agree with the statement. Overall, 77 percent of Republicans, 64 percent of independents, and 53 percent of Democrats agree with the statement as well.

The survey shows that voters remain divided on whether Buttigieg should have taken 2 months of paid maternity leave, as 48 percent disagree and 47 percent agree. However, as the poll suggests, the larger issue is Buttigieg leaving his position as the supply chain crisis continues to mount.



Container ships and tankers are anchored close to the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach on February 1, 2021, in San Pedro, California. (Mario Tama/Getty Images)

Overall, 37 percent have a favorable view of the official, compared to 49 percent who view him unfavorably:

Sixty percent (60%) of likely Democratic voters have a favorable impression of Buttigieg, but that view is shared by only 18% of Republicans and 29% of voters not affiliated with either major party. A majority (52%) of Republican voters have a Very Unfavorable impression of Buttigieg, as do 43% of unaffiliated voters and 16% of Democrats.

The survey, taken October 17-18, 2021, among 1,000 likely U.S. voters, has a margin of error of +/- 3 percent.

 

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Josh Hawley Introduces Bill to Curb Biden's Supply Chain Crisis

Josh Hawley introduced a bill to curb President Joe Biden's supply crisis to "revitalize American manufacturing while securing critical supply chains."

www.breitbart.com

Josh Hawley Introduces Bill to Curb Biden’s Supply Chain Crisis: Make in America to Sell in America

Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images
JACOB BLISS20 Oct 202195

Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) introduced a bill to curb President Joe Biden’s supply crisis to “revitalize American manufacturing while securing critical supply chains.”

Hawley’s bill — Make in America to Sell in America Act — would require multinational corporations within the United States to increase the production of goods in the U.S. in order to sell within the U.S. The senator’s bill would help end the country’s overreliance on foreign factories and provide a check to make sure a supply chain crisis, which the country is currently in, does not happen again.

“Joe Biden’s supply chain crisis is getting worse with every passing day, straining the finances of working Americans who have already been forced to endure so much over the past year and a half,” Hawley said in a statement. “Biden’s policies have given us empty shelves and rising prices across the country.”

“It’s past time for the U.S. to end its crippling dependency on foreign manufacturing in countries like China and ensure that we actually produce the goods we need here at home,” Hawley added.

According to the press release, if the bill is passed and signed into law, it would:

• Direct the Department of Commerce (DOC), in consultation with the Department of Defense (DOD), to produce an annual report that identifies finished and intermediate manufactured goods that are critical for the national security of the United States or the protection of the industrial base of the United States.
• Require that the goods identified by DOC and DOD be subject to a local content requirement of over 50 percent, meaning that over 50 percent of the value of the good must be produced in the United States in order to be sold commercially in the United States. These requirements would go into effect three years after enactment.
• Enforce these requirements similar to anti-dumping duties, whereby domestic manufacturers can petition the International Trade Commission and DOC for enforcement actions against importers of goods that fail to meet the new standards.

Hawley noted that “imports from countries like China are surging, all while global supply chains are breaking down, goods are backlogged at our seaports, and new shortages are sweeping the nation.” In addition, the U.S. trade deficit hit a record high in August — $73.3 billion.

 

[marsh]

Poll: Majority Are 'Personally' Affected by Supply Chain Shortages

Most Americans say they have been "personally" affected by supply chain shortages when attempting to buy basic consumer goods.

www.breitbart.com

Poll: Majority of Americans Say They Are ‘Personally’ Affected by Supply Chain Shortages

AP Photo/Vincent Yu
HANNAH BLEAU20 Oct 2021107

Most Americans say they have been “personally” affected by supply chain shortages when attempting to buy basic consumer goods, a Convention of States Action/Trafalgar Group survey released Wednesday found.

They survey asked respondents, “Are you personally encountering delays or shortages when attempting to purchase common consumer products?”

Overall, 53.7 percent said they are, while just over one-third, 35.8 percent, said they are not. Another 10.5 percent remain unsure.

Notably, a plurality of Democrats, 48.3 percent, claim they are not personally encountering issues, while 42.4 percent contend they are. However, 67.7 percent of Republicans and 50.6 percent of independent voters say they are experiencing shortages or delays.

The survey, taken October 15-18, 2021, among 1,079 likely general election voters, has a margin of error of +/- 2.99 percent.

It follows the continuing supply chain crisis as cargo ships remain backed up, unable to dock and unload off the U.S. Coast. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg (D) has come under tremendous fire over his absence, and it was revealed last week that he has been on paid maternity leave since mid-August after he and his husband adopted twins. A Rasmussen Reports survey released Tuesday showed the Biden official with a favorability rating of just 37 percent.

Meanwhile, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) has offered Florida ports as a potential solution to the mounting supply chain crisis, announcing on Tuesday that the Sunshine State’s ports are open, offering incentives for businesses to move their cargo through.

“We in Florida have the ability to help alleviate these log jams and help to ameliorate the problems with the supply chain,” DeSantis said during a press conference at JAXPORT on Tuesday, noting that Florida has been committed to reliable, modern, accessible port facilities since he became governor.

“Florida’s here. We got capacity, and we’ve also got incentive packages to make it worth your while to be able to bring your business to our ports,” he added.

 

[marsh]

Supply Chain Crisis Leaves Farmers Without Much-Needed Equipment

Farmers stand to be hit hard by Biden's supply chain crisis if they are unable to get the equipment they need before harvest time.

www.breitbart.com

Biden’s Supply Chain Crisis Leaves Farmers Without Much-Needed Equipment
12

WPTV News 5
KATHERINE HAMILTON20 Oct 2021156

Farmers stand to be hit hard by President Joe Biden’s supply chain crisis if they are unable to get the equipment they need before harvest time, NBC News reported Tuesday.

“Crops can be damaged if they are planted or harvested late, and the insurance provided by the Agriculture Department requires that seeds are put in the ground and produce is pulled by a particular date to be fully insured,” according to the report.

Matt Ackley, the chief marketing officer of Richie Bros. Auction, told the outlet that prices for farm equipment are also “growing considerably.” Richie Bros. Auction is reportedly one of the world’s largest auction sites “dedicated to the sale of heavy equipment.” Since last year, the price index for tractors has increased 19 percent.

“The company’s website, where it hosts online auctions, has attracted more than 161 million visitors and 1.3 million bidders in 2021 — that’s up by 15 percent and 19 percent respectively from the same time a year ago,” according to the report.

Ackley said the he is worried the increase and shortages could be exacerbated after 10,000 John Deere workers went on strike last week. The United Auto Workers union staged a walkout at 14 manufacturing plants due to the company refusing to increase wages above six percent after the company reported record profits this year.

“As you get any type of disruption, especially from an [original equipment manufacturer] standpoint — like this strike — to an already stretched supply chain, you get quite a significant backlog,” Ackley said. “People are fighting vigorously for what’s left.”

Farmers in Palm Beach County, Florida told WPTV many of the supplies they need are on back order.

“Labor is short, materials are short, and expenses are up,” said Eric Hopkins, the senior vice president of Hundley Farms.

According to the report, sugar cane stalks are supposed to be cutdown soon — a process that could be stalled because “parts to fix equipment are on backorder, and packaging and pallets are hard to come by.”

“We’re trying to be profitable out here, and the higher all of our costs of inputs goes, the more we have to charge the consumer, and everybody is going to feel this pinch,” he continued.

According to a Texas Farm Bureau report, supply chain disruptions and labor shortages have plagued the industry throughout the pandemic, causing retail prices to drastically rise with “no sign of slowing down anytime soon.”

The report continued:

The issues plaguing the economy affect every link of a supply chain, noted Kenneth Zuckerberg, CoBank lead grain and farm supply economist.

Agricultural retailers are no exception. With a steady need for crop inputs like seed and chemicals, farm suppliers are well positioned for a strong fourth consecutive season, Zuckerberg wrote.

But the raw inputs for many fertilizers, herbicides, pesticides and insecticides are manufactured overseas. If those are unavailable or in short supply, agricultural retailer and farm cooperative profits could decrease considerably.

Texas Farm Bureau (TFB) Associate Director of Commodity and Regulatory Activities Brant Wilbourn said while farmers, ranchers, and business across agriculture were beginning to recover after decreased profits last year, the effects of factory closures across supply chains, including increased prices and labor shortages, could continue to 2022.

Wilbourn noted that consumers often think when clothing and food prices increase, it is because farmers have also increased their prices — a notion he countered, saying farmers and ranchers during high inflation times are more likely to rake in less profit.

“I’d caution people to remember when they see higher prices at the grocery store in coming months that farmers and ranchers are price-takers. They don’t direct the prices they receive for their crops and livestock. Those are directed by market factors like labor or material shortages at the packaging plant and what processors are willing to pay them,” he said. “So, just know that farmers and ranchers are suffering along with you right now. They’re facing higher input costs and lower prices for their products, and they’re stuck in the middle.”

 

[marsh]

 

[vector7]

Absolute Insanity... This Is Without A Doubt A CRISIS & INEXCUSABLE.
RT 1:26secs

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1451172669127380998

View: https://twitter.com/TPUSA/status/1451172669127380998?s=20

 

[marsh]

Dems Press Buttigieg on Supply Chain Crisis: ‘Take Decisive Action'

Two California Democrats have sent a letter to Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg asking for action on the supply chain crisis.

www.breitbart.com

Democrats Press Transportation Secretary Buttigieg: ‘Take Decisive Action’ on Supply Chain Crisis

Win McNamee/Getty Images
PENNY STARR21 Oct 2021170

Two California Democrat Senators have sent a letter to Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg asking that his agency “take decisive action to address supply chain bottlenecks in California and across the country.”

The press release about Sens. Dianne Feinstein and Alex Padilla’s letter links the crisis to the need to pass President Joe Biden’s “so-called” infrastructure bill that includes day care and climate change provisions “to ensure supply chains are more resilient to interruptions.”

“They also noted that the backlog not only has the potential to delay critical deliveries for businesses and consumers, but also may have played a role in the recent oil spill off the coast of Orange County as container ships are forced to anchor off the coast amid delays,” the press release about the letter said.

The letter said, in part:

As California ports…and their workers bolster their operations to help clear the shipping backlog, there remain additional transportation- and logistics-related challenges to moving these goods on our highways and railroads, including scarce freight rail and trucking capacity in certain regions, all of which is regulated by the Department of Transportation.

California plays a central role in the movement of goods throughout the United States. The Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach handle 40 percent of all container traffic that enters the United States, much of which is then distributed from warehouses in California’s Inland Empire. Unprecedented consumer demand and the current unpredictability in the transportation supply chain have significantly increased container volumes at the Ports this year, leading to a backlog of cargo ships off the Southern California coast that, in addition to disrupting supply chains and causing numerous economic problems, may well have been responsible for the recent oil spill.

As California ports, including the Ports of Oakland and Hueneme, and their workers bolster their operations to help clear the shipping backlog, there remain additional transportation- and logistics-related challenges to moving these goods on our highways and railroads, including scarce freight rail and trucking capacity in certain regions, all of which is regulated by the Department of Transportation.

The letter does not ask for a direct response from Buttigieg.

 

[marsh]

160 House Republicans Accuse Biden of ‘Exacerbating’ Supply Chain Crisis

Over 150 House Republicans blamed Biden for "exacerbating" the supply chain crisis by pushing welfare "spending and taxation legislation."

www.breitbart.com

160 House Republicans Accuse Biden of ‘Exacerbating’ Supply Chain Crisis
1

AP Photo/Evan Vucci
WENDELL HUSEBØ21 Oct 202148

One hundred sixty House Republicans on Tuesday blamed President Joe Biden for “exacerbating” the supply chain crisis by pushing welfare “spending and taxation legislation.”

“We must address the global supply chain and ports crisis before Congress even considers additional social spending and taxation legislation,” the letter began, noting Biden’s largest welfare spending proposal since the Lyndon Johnson’s “Great Society” proposals in the 1960s.

The House Republicans then charged Biden with increasing the cost of goods for American workers and families. Food costs, for example, have massively risen since 2020 with meats, poultry, fish, and eggs increasing by 10.5 percent.


AP Photo/Mel Evans

“Speaker Pelosi, Majority Leader Schumer, and your Administration use infrastructure as a Trojan horse to push radical policies that make it more difficult and expensive for families to find or afford basic goods and for businesses to continue the long road to recovery from the pandemic,” the group continued.


Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) (L) and Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer (D-NY) (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images).

The Republicans then demanded Biden reverse his priority of enacting massive tax and spend legislation and focus on reducing the supply chain crisis. “Our priority right now should be strengthening our Nation’s economy and increasing our global competitiveness,” the letter read. “The policies of your Presidency and party’s leaders in Congress are exacerbating or simply ignoring the underlying supply chain crisis.”

“These efforts only serve to weaken American competitiveness and shrink our economy,” they said, “and they will certainly ensure that this Christmas will not be merry.”

The members lastly demanded Biden “step up for American workers and businesses by halting your reckless tax and spending plan currently pending before Congress” and “work on real infrastructure solutions that focus on moving goods and people safely and efficiently throughout our great country and around the world.”

The supply chain crisis has likely been created by a lack of labor due to Democrat-controlled states and the federal government handing out large unemployment benefits, which has encouraged workers to remain unemployed after the pandemic. Chris Spear, president and CEO of the American Trucking Association, told CNN this week the supply chain crisis is short 80,000 drivers, a “record high.”

As a result of the short supply of truckers, seaports are full of containers that need to be moved across the country to their final destinations. The crowded ports are causing shipping vessels to wait sometimes up to two weeks to unload cargo.

The delay in offloading has delayed voyages back to Asia to pick up another load of containers. The extended amount of time in transatlantic shipping has caused cargo shipping prices to increase. What would once cost $3,800 in 2020 to ship a container from Asia to the West Coast now costs $17,000.

 

[marsh]

Stop Blaming Incompetence: Dear Leader Biden is CHOOSING Not to Fix Supply Chain Crisis

At what point will more people start to realize that the Biden-Harris regime are intentionally tanking this nation? The writing

truthbasedmedia.com

Stop Blaming Incompetence: Dear Leader Biden is CHOOSING Not to Fix Supply Chain Crisis

by JD RUCKER
October 21, 2021

At what point will more people start to realize that the Biden-Harris regime are intentionally tanking this nation? The writing is on the wall, and it’s so crystal clear we do not need a prophet like Daniel to tell us what it means. Whoever is controlling Joe Biden is having him steer the country towards oblivion and it’s time for more patriots to ask why.

Stop blaming incompetence. This regime is many things, but they are not so absolutely stupid that they do not recognize extremely easy fixes to the problems our nation faces. To paraphrase Senator Marco Rubio in his failed attempt at debating during the 2016 GOP primaries, let’s dispel with the notion that the Biden-Harris regime doesn’t know what they’re doing. They know exactly what they’re doing. They’re destroying the country willfully and completely.

The supply chain crisis is the biggest existential threat America faces right now. It’s bigger than Covid-19. One can argue that it’s not bigger than the vaccine mandates, and they may be correct, but at least the mandates are challenges we can fight directly. As average citizens, we do not have the ability to fight the specter of economic collapse prompted by a supply chain apocalypse. That is all in the hands of the powers-that-be, and they’re apparently not willing to lift a finger to stop it.

The most infuriating part is that in a world in which DC is contemplating trillions of dollars in spending, they’re not actively addressing the supply chain problem that can be solved with millions of dollars. For those who need perspective, a trillion dollars is million times a million. The gap between what it takes to fix this problem and what they’re talking about spending for their Green New Deal monstrosity is so large, it MUST be intentional that they’re not doing what it takes to make the problem go away.

They could send in the National Guard and have the problem fixed in months.

They could invest in a massive hiring campaign, subsidizing the shipping, warehouse, rail, and trucking industries temporarily to clear out the bottleneck and send the economy skyrocketing. For the first time in my life, I’m recommending subsidies for this one-off scenario. That’s how bad things are and that’s how easy it would be to fix this issue.

So, it brings us back to the original question: Why is the Biden-Harris regime allowing this to happen? We could reword the question to focus on Afghanistan and the Americans trapped behind enemy lines. Why did they leave people behind in the first place, and why have they actively subverted attempts to rescue them? We could vary the question and point it towards the southern border. Why did they take policies that were working a year ago and replace them with open borders policies while pretending they’re not embracing open borders?

Pick a policy and apply a variation of the same question. Over and over we will see that this regime is aggressively working towards the cataclysmic destruction of this nation. And I cannot stress enough that it’s not incompetence at play.

There is no degree of stupidity that politicians or bureaucrats can achieve that would make them miss so badly on literally everything. We can’t blame Biden’s dementia since he’s not really running things. This yields only one possible conclusion: They are evil and are destroying the nation as part of a nefarious agenda.

The most likely scenario seems to be that they’re ushering in The Great Reset. Doing so requires the obliteration of capitalism and a worldwide embrace of Neo-Marxism. They’ve already been so engaged in Pandemic Panic Theater that it’s clear the vaccine agenda is an extremely important part of the plan. Must the economic collapse of the United States be rushed in order for the architects of The Great Reset to see their machinations come to fruition? Yes. Of course. Duh.

If there a few honest men or women in Washington DC today, it’s imperative that they ring this alarm bell as loudly as they possibly can. As their vocal constituents, we must make them pull their heads out of the sand and address this issue immediately. We’re not talking about weak Christmas gifts or ramen noodles for Thanksgiving. We’re talking about the dominoes rapidly falling that will make the dollar worthless, negating our ability to live without government intervention. And when that happens, all will be lost. What Venezuela has experienced over the last five years will be concentrated into a much shorter timespan in a nation that is ill-equipped to handle ubiquitous destitution.

If this isn’t fixed immediately, America will cease to exist.

I have NEVER been one who blares klaxons unnecessarily. I’ve railed against the Chicken Littles who started burying food and ammunition ahead of Y2K. I was not embracing the panic that many touted during the 2008 recession. But this is different. This is very real and very capable of plummeting us all down the precipice. It’s time to wake up and scream at the top of our lungs that DC must do something immediately before it’s too late.

Below is an article by Michael Snyder from The Economic Collapse Blog. Read it, share it, and do whatever it takes to make sure the supply chain crisis does not go the way of Afghanistan and the southern border. This must not be ignored a moment longer.

Our Epic Supply Chain Crisis Just Hit Another Level, and Biden Is Considering Calling in the National Guard to Help

It is the month of October, and right now many Americans are more scared by the state of our national supply chains than by anything else. Some of the things that I am going to share with you in this article are truly frightening, and I would very much encourage you to take them seriously. Our economic infrastructure is failing on a massive scale, and officials are openly admitting that things will get even worse in the months ahead. We are in uncharted territory, because none of us has ever seen anything like this before. If our leaders cannot get this fixed, 2022 is going to be a truly nightmarish year.

Of course just last week Joe Biden gave a big speech in which he assured all of us that he was implementing measures which would soon turn things around.
Unfortunately, just like with Afghanistan, the southern border, inflation and so many other problems, our supply chain crisis has gotten even worse now that Biden is personally involved. On Tuesday, it was being reported that the number of vessels backed up off the coast of southern California has just hit a brand new record high…

The nation’s largest ports shattered more records Monday as massive bottlenecks at the Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach continue to wreak supply chain havoc.

The Marine Exchange of Southern California reported 100 vessels berthed October 18, topping the previous record of 97 set September 19.

A single container ship can hold thousands upon thousands of enormous shipping containers, and so we are talking about a backlog of absolutely immense proportions. It would take many months just to work through a backlog of this magnitude even if the ports in southern California were making progress in paring it down. But instead of making progress, the backlog just continues to get even deeper.

As the supply chain crisis escalates, the Biden administration has actively been considering using the National Guard on an emergency basis…

White House officials have explored in recent weeks whether the National Guard could be deployed to help address the nation’s mounting supply chain backlog, three people with knowledge of the matter said.

The idea appears unlikely to proceed as of now, the people said, but reflects the extent to which internal administration deliberations about America’s overwhelmed supply chain have sparked outside-the-box proposals to leverage government resources to address the issue.

This is how serious things have become. Our supply chains are in such a state of chaos that the Biden administration is actually thinking of doing something that has never been done before in American history.

Of course publicly they are still trying to put a happy face on things, but privately administration officials are really freaking out. And things could soon get a lot worse.

Today, approximately 85 percent of all magnesium production in the world happens in China. We should have never allowed ourselves to become so dependent on China, because now we are facing a critical shortage of magnesium, and that could result in a nightmarish shortage of aluminum…

The source of the shortage is China’s monopoly on global magnesium production.

Production curbs of energy-intensive smelters have reduced the industrial metal’s output, resulting in dwindling stockpiles in Europe and North America.

Barclays analyst Amos Fletcher told clients in a note that “there are no substitutes for magnesium in aluminum sheet and billet production.” He warned if “magnesium supply stops,” the entire auto industry will grind to a halt.

Oh. That is bad. When I first read that, I just sat there stunned for a moment. Are things really that crazy already? Yes, they are. In fact, we are being told that magnesium reserves in Europe will be completely exhausted “at the end of November 2021 at the latest”…

“It is expected that the current magnesium reserves in Germany and throughout Europe will be exhausted in a few weeks at the end of November 2021 at the latest,” the group said. “In the event of a supply bottleneck of this magnitude, there is a risk of massive production losses.”

Needless to say, it wouldn’t just be the auto industry that grinds to a halt. Just think of how many food and beverage products come in aluminum cans. I don’t know if I even have sufficient words to describe how serious this is.

Meanwhile, it is also being reported that we are potentially facing a propane “armageddon” this winter…

The expanding energy crisis is causing propane to rocket higher (read: here) as supplies dwindle to below seasonal levels as research firm IHS Markit Ltd. warns of “armageddon” during the Northern Hemisphere winter.

IHS analyst Edgar Ang told attendees during a virtual presentation on Tuesday that US propane inventories are at a record low and will be extremely tight as cold weather is ahead.

That isn’t good. Millions of Americans use propane to heat their homes. So what are those millions of Americans going to do when supplies of propane run out?

If you use propane to heat your home and you don’t have a back up plan, you need to start developing one right now. As if things weren’t bad enough already, the absurd mandates that our politicians are pushing on all of us threaten to make things far, far worse.

Let me give you just one example…

Union Pacific Railroad is the latest company to board the mandatory vaccine train. The company’s 31,000 employees across 23 states have been given just under two months to comply or face additional consequences.

We are already having enormous problems getting things transported across the country, and trains are a key part of that equation. So what would happen if thousands upon thousands of highly experienced railroad workers are suddenly railroaded out of their jobs? Of course similar scenarios will be playing out in industry after industry in the months ahead.

The stage is perfectly being set for so many of the things that I have been warning about, and I am entirely convinced that we will soon see extreme economic pain all across the nation. In this sort of an economic environment, there is no way that our politicians should even be considering any sort of mandates.

But they are pushing ahead anyway, and we are all going to feel the consequences very deeply.

 

[marsh]

Rep. Chip Roy introduces BEAT CHINA Act to combat supply chain crisis

Rep. Chip Roy is introducing the BEAT CHINA Act, a bill to incentivize companies to bring their manufacturing back to the United States.

nypost.com

Rep. Chip Roy introduces BEAT CHINA Act to combat supply chain crisis

Juliegrace Brufke
October 20, 2021 1:58pm

Rep. Chip Roy introduced the BEAT CHINA Act on Oct. 20, 2021.Kevin Dietsch/Getty Image

In an effort to combat the supply chain crisis and the rise of China’s economic influence, Rep. Chip Roy is introducing a bill to incentivize companies to bring their manufacturing back to the United States.

The BEAT CHINA Act — introduced on Wednesday — looks to push manufacturers producing goods abroad to move to the US by providing tax advantages to eligible companies.

Under the legislation, non-residential property purchases made by companies that shift their operations domestically would be “considered 20-year property instead of 39-year property,” which would make them eligible for full and immediate expensing.

The bill would also make full and immediate expensing permanent in addition to allowing manufacturers to “exclude from gross income any gain earned on the disposition of assets in its country of origin,” to prevent them from being hit with a tax upon their relocation.



Shipping containers at the Seagirt Marine Terminal, Port of Baltimore on Oct. 18, 2021. While Baltimore’s marine terminal is not dealing with the same backups as shipping ports in California, the US is facing a supply chain crunch.EPA
Proponents of the measure note that China currently produces 28 percent of the world’s manufacturing output in contrast to the United States’ 16 percent, with GOP lawmakers arguing the supply chain crisis proves the US needs to take action to reduce its dependence on other countries for products.

“As long as we depend on China and the rest of the world to keep our shelves stocked, our economic prosperity, our political liberty, and our national security are all in grave danger. Relying too heavily on supply chains based in other countries is a recipe for disaster — especially when the governments of those countries wish to destroy our way of life, as does the Chinese Communist Party,” Roy (R-Texas) said in a statement.

America’s supply chain shortage is evident in local pet and grocery stores in New York City as store owners struggle to keep inventory stocked on Oct. 16, 2021.Mpi999 / MediaPunch

“We must take bold action, consistent with the spirit of free enterprise, to reduce our dependence on foreign supply chains. The American people deserve an economy that can provide for itself; that’s why I am proud to reintroduce the BEAT CHINA Act, which would extend tax advantages to any foreign manufacturer that moves its production to the U.S.”

The bill would require manufacturers to maintain the same production levels as they conducted abroad to qualify for the tax incentives.

Republicans have been highly critical of the Biden administration’s handling of the supply chain crisis, arguing more should have been done to prevent the bottleneck ahead of the holidays and that it could have national security implications.


Roy argues that the US needs to take action to reduce its dependence on China for products.Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images

Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle have also expressed strong concerns about threats from the CCP, emphasizing the need to combat China’s efforts to overtake the US as the largest economy.

 

[marsh]

Transportation Sec. Buttigieg Tells Americans to Get Used to Shipping 'Disruptions,' 'Shocks to the System'

Unbelievable!

thefederalistpapers.org

Transportation Sec. Buttigieg Tells Americans to Get Used to Shipping 'Disruptions,' 'Shocks to the System'

By Jack Davis, The Western Journal
Published October 20, 2021 at 8:42pm

Having less is just the way life goes in President Joe Biden’s America, according to Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg.

Buttigieg, who was on paternity leave for months as the supply chain crisis intensified, made the interview rounds this week and put a happy face on the crisis.

In comments Wednesday, he indicated Americans will need to get used to delays and potentially seeing empty shelves for the foreseeable future.

“There are going to be disruptions and shocks to the system as long as the pandemic continues,” he said, according to Reuters.

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1448641615778680837

View: https://twitter.com/i/status/1448641615778680837
1:16 min

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Rating firm Moody’s said Wednesday that the supply chain issues plaguing America will likely not subside any time soon, and shortages, higher transportation costs and higher prices will ripple through the economy.

But Buttigieg found a sunny side in all that when he popped in for a chat on “The View.”

“Americans have more money in their pockets compared to a year ago,” Buttigieg said, according to ABC News.

“Where they used to maybe spend it on going to shows or travel, they’ve been more likely to spend it on things, which is why actually we have a record number of goods coming through our ports.”

“Retail sales are through the roof, that’s part of why we have this challenge.”

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1449724166811398150

View: https://twitter.com/i/status/1449724166811398150
.40 min

Buttigieg also put in a brief plug for the infrastructure bill House Democrats have been holding hostage for weeks.

“There’s no easy fix. There’s no magic wand, but there are a lot of things we can do,” Buttigieg said. “We’re relying on infrastructure that was built decades ago, sometimes a century ago.”

His comments on “The View” echoed those made during his Sunday interview on CNN’s “State of the Union.”

“Certainly a lot of the challenges that we’ve been experiencing this year will continue into next year. But there are both short-term and long-term steps that we can take to do something about it,” Buttigieg told host Jake Tapper.

“Look, part of what’s happening isn’t just the supply side, it’s the demand side. Demand is off the charts. This is one more example of why we need to pass the infrastructure bill,” he continued.

“There are $17 billion in the President’s infrastructure plan for ports alone and we need to deal with these long-term issues that have made us vulnerable to these kinds of bottlenecks when there are demand fluctuations, shocks and disruptions like the ones that have been caused by the pandemic.”

“Tucker Carlson Tonight” host Tucker Carlson said Tuesday that instead of leaders telling Americans they can fix the problems of the nation, the Biden administration is telling Americans to live with them.

Here’s how Carlson summed up the trend: “As your quality of life declines, you are instructed not to notice.”

Slamming an Op-Ed published by The Washington Post that scolded Americans for “[ranting] about short-staffed stores and supply chain woes,” Carlson made that into a symbol of what’s wrong with the nation.

“So if you don’t like the fact the shelves are bare in your local store, don’t throw a fit. Don’t be an entitled little tool. Lower your expectations. What did you expect in America? Come on. Bread lines, we’ve always had bread lines. It’s sort of charmingly retro, these bread lines. Don’t complain as your life becomes worse and as your country degrades,” he said.

“That’s the message, and not surprisingly, that message is coming directly from the people who are making your life worse and destroying the country. That would, of course, would be the White House.”

This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.

 

[marsh]

Alabama School Asking Parents to Send Kids to School With Lunches After Running out of Food Due to Worsening Supply Chain Crisis

A school district in Alabama is asking parents to step up and fill the void after running short of food

ourgoldguy.com

Alabama School Asking Parents to Send Kids to School With Lunches After Running out of Food Due to Worsening Supply Chain Crisis
by Our Gold Guy

October 21, 2021



A school district in Alabama is asking parents to step up and fill the void after running short of food thanks to the worsening supply chain crisis under Joe Biden.

Officials with Alexander City Schools asked parents to begin feeding their kids breakfast at home or send them to school with food of their own because the district hasn’t gotten as many deliveries from food vendors.

“We have taken action to open accounts with other vendors in an attempt to diversify our supply options,” school officials wrote in a Facebook post over the weekend. “This is a situation that is frustrating for you as a parent, and for us as well as our ability to feed our students is being greatly impacted.”

“Alexander City Schools, like many schools across the nation, is experiencing supply chain issues with our food vendors. As you know, breakfast and lunch is served daily in our schools. In previous weeks we have not received our food deliveries due to suppliers who are short on supplies, drivers and even warehouse employees,” the post continued.

“Breakfast may be impacted more so than lunch in the coming weeks. If possible, we ask that you feed your student breakfast prior to school or try to send a snack. Some of you have noticed our menus have not been updated regularly. When supplies do arrive, we do not always receive what we have requested; therefore altering the menus,” the post added.

“Please know we will continue to update you as we work to resolve this issue,” the school district’s Post continued.

Last year, the school district had an enrollment of 2,870 students; 65 percent participated in the free- and reduced-price meals programs, the Alabama State Dept. of Education said, according to AL.com.

The site adds:

Alabama schools continue to face food shortages as the pandemic impacts the workforce needed to serve and deliver meals, as well as supplies of food and packaging materials. Every school district in the state is currently facing these shortages to varying degrees, according to the department of education.

The United States Department of Agriculture announced Sept. 29 that it will invest $1.5 billion this year to help schools feed students. However, information on how those funds will be allocated has not yet been given to states.

“As with all funding received, once directives and guidance is provided by USDA, we will follow those guidelines and disburse the funds quickly,” said Anjelice Lowe, Child Nutrition Programs Director for the department of education, in an interview with AL.com.

While many other states no longer use food distributors, Alabama does, Lowe said, adding that the department will continue to “exhaust all efforts” before having to close a school over the shortages.

Other districts in the state, such as Dothan City Schools, however, have asked parents to possibly shift their children to remote learning because of a dearth of food supplies.

“As a last resort, we may also ask that you prepare to have virtual/remote school days a few days out of the week to alleviate the stress of our food supplies,” the district noted in a Sept. 23 note to families. “We face a situation where we must do everything we can to continue providing a nurturing environment for our students to learn and grow.”

The shortage of food at these and other schools around the country come as the Biden regime continues to grapple with a supply chain crisis it seems incapable of solving. The lack of ability to get cargo ships offloaded and enough trucks to deliver products to market is having a dramatic effect on prices, leading to increases across the board.

In fact, a recent survey found that most Americans blame Biden for the price spikes and general inflationary pressures.

A Politico/Morning Consult poll released Tuesday shows that around 40 percent of respondents said that the Biden administration’s policies were “very responsible” for higher inflation, while 22 percent said that they were “somewhat responsible.”

Sources include:

• AL.com
• USAFeatures.news
• NewsTarget.com

 

[Ractivist]

When will the people figure out that China and the deep state are at war with the people of the US. That's the forest thru the trees perspective. Everything they have done they have done blatantly, with lies upon lies upon damned lies.

Yes, the deep state owns the administration hook line and sinker. Shore enough?

 

[marsh]

CBS News reports on Biden’s supply chain nightmare…

When your obedient lap dog turns on you…

citizenfreepress.com

CBS News reports on Biden’s supply chain nightmare…[RX]
Posted by Kane on October 22, 2021 3:04 pm

View: https://youtu.be/dw8G3NAQEfg
2:08 min

 

[marsh]

Zerohedge

ZeroHedge - On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero

www.zerohedge.com

Retailers Lining Store Shelves With Props To "Hide Supply Shortage"

FRIDAY, OCT 22, 2021 - 01:55 PM
Americans are waking up to the fact that shortages of everyday products such as ice cream, frozen food, soda, chicken, spices, coffee, fish sticks, snacks, and toilet paper are popping up all over the country as supply chains remain heavily congested 19 months after the virus pandemic first began. Instead of leaving some store shelves bare, which might insight fear and buying panic among consumers, some stores are lining their empty shelves with meaningless items to appear as full as possible.

A little more than a week ago, hashtag #EmptyShelvesJoe was one of the hottest trends across Twitter but was quickly squashed by Twitter police. People from all over the country went to their local supermarkets and big-box outlets to point out how supply chain snarls have left some store shelves bare.



Retailers have since panicked, and social media users are now pointing out that some store shelves are lined with single items to "hide the supply shortage."

A user tweeted a picture of what appears to be single boxes of Kraft Macaroni & Cheese lining multiple shelves.



One of the most stunning attempts to keep the appearance that everything was fine was when one retailer lined multiple aisles with dozens and dozens of foldable chairs.

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1451288329245368325

View: https://twitter.com/i/status/1451288329245368325
.29 min

Some on Twitter explained this is just part of the retailers "fronting" merchandise which means they're bringing everything to the front to make the store look as packed as possible.

What's troubling is that retailers are running out of items, and it's becoming entirely obvious now as congested supply chains may suggest that certain products will not be available in time for the holidays. It's okay if stores run out of PlayStations and Nerf Blasters, but if shelves in food sections start to go bare - this could be very problematic.

Remember what happened in the Soviet Union right before the collapse?



For now, retailers are creating the appearance that everything is fine so empty store shelves don't spark buying panic that would strain supplies even more.

 

[marsh]

Zerohedge

ZeroHedge - On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero

www.zerohedge.com

Top US Port Chief Warns: "Shop Early" For Christmas Gifts Because Snarled Supply Chains Will Persist

FRIDAY, OCT 22, 2021 - 11:00 AM
The executive director of the Port of Long Beach, the largest container port in the US, told Bloomberg Thursday that Americans should buy their holiday gifts now as congestion continues to snarl supply chains.

"Shop early because these delays and bottlenecks are going to continue to the end of the year," Mario Cordero, the port's executive director, said during an interview with Bloomberg Television. "Hopefully, we'll have some strong mitigating factors."

The Port of Long Beach and neighboring Port of Los Angeles handle 40% of all US containerized goods. At the twin ports, more than 103 container ships are at terminals or waiting offshore on Wednesday, an all-time high. In pre-pandemic time, the average backlog of vessels at the ports is between 10 and 20.


Chart: American Shipper based on data from Marine Exchange of Southern California. Data bi-monthly April-Nov 2020; daily Dec 2020-present
Cordero's port continues to see a massive increase in containers, up 24% this year through September. He said surging e-commerce orders are to blame, adding that the top priority to fix this mess is to have the entire supply chain operating on a 24-hour basis, seven days a week, including the port, truck and train networks, and warehouses.



Worsening supply chain challenges are only making things more complicated for the Biden administration, who recently announced measures to operate ports on a 24/7 basis is nothing more than hot air.

Last week, a top toy executive told Fox New that Biden's port directive is "too little, too late" to save Christmas hence why Cordero told Bloomberg's audience last night to buy holidays gifts now.

There's even been talk behind the scenes by the White House, weighing the use of the National Guard to alleviate stretched supply chains so that Americans will hopefully get their consumer goods before Christmas. The administration is searching for ways to alleviate port congestion and doesn't want to be seen as the "Grinch" if consumer goods cannot be delivered to store shelves or their doorsteps.

The World Bank and IHS Markit rank both ports as some of the world's least efficient, suggesting that structural issues continue to cause congestion of critical supply chains that might ruin Christmas for some.

 

[marsh]

California Drove Truckers Out of Business. Now Store Shelves Are Empty | Frontpage Mag

Daniel Greenfield, a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the Freedom Center, is an investigative journalist and writer focusing on the radical Left and Islamic

www.frontpagemag.com

California Drove Truckers Out of Business. Now Store Shelves Are Empty

Democrat regulations are holding the entire economy hostage.

Fri Oct 22, 2021
Daniel Greenfield
85 comments

After a long cross-country flight, I made it out of LAX and into an Uber. I wasn’t in the mood to talk, but the driver was. And hearing that I was a journalist, he wanted to tell me a story. I’ve heard a lot of stories over the years, but this may have been the most important one I let go.

He hadn’t always been driving an Uber at 11:30 at night. Not all that long ago he used to have his own business with 7 trucks before he was bankrupted by California’s insane regulations.

I listened, but didn’t pay enough attention. The impact of California’s Democrat legislative supermajority on truckers was just another data point alongside what was happening to freelancers of all kinds and a lot of small businesses. Stories like this were everywhere and there was little interest in them even in conservative circles outside the tarnished golden state.

Back then we still lived in a world where you could walk into a thousand stores with fully stocked shelves. People ordered from Amazon and expected its burgeoning last mile delivery service to make products magically appear overnight. Just in time inventory systems were more efficient and any day now products would be delivered by self-driving cars or aerial drones.

2020 and 2021 have given this Big Tech fantasy world and the rest of us a good kicking.

The massive supply chain mess that’s leaving stores empty and orders unfulfilled doesn’t have a single point of failure, but dozens of them. China’s energy shortages, the overhyped predictive powers of Big Data, the fragility of the global economy, fuel costs, and welfare state worker shortages are all players.

But California’s truck bans are a key link in the great failure chain.

While I was riding home that night, California trucking companies were going bankrupt at a rapid rate. Few outside the industry were paying attention or understood what that might mean.

2019 was described as a “bloodbath” for the trucking industry with 640 trucking companies across the country filing for bankruptcy in just the first half of the year. Thousands of truck drivers were left unemployed. Many went into the expanding last mile delivery business, some as contractors for Amazon. But California truckers and businesses had their own special woes.

Two years ago, Governor Newsom signed the Democrat supermajority's Assembly Bill 5 into law. While AB5 was billed as a crackdown on Uber and Lyft, forcing the companies to treat l freelance contractors as employees, the gig economy companies pushed Proposition 22 so that they were the only ones exempt from the law. (A Democrat judge has since illegally blocked the approved ballot measure while falsely claiming that it was unconstitutional.)

AB5 however was less about Uber than it was about outlawing freelance employees in order to force them into unions. The union power grab inconvenienced Uber and Lyft, but crushed freelance workers in a variety of fields including journalism. One of the fields was trucking.

Over the summer, the California Trucking Association actually went to the Supreme Court to fight AB5 and allow owners and operators to use independent contractors. The CTA listed 70,000 owner operators. In the years since AB5, Ubers have become scarcer and more expensive, which is what the law was actually designed to do, but the consequences to the trucking industry have been far worse albeit invisible to most people until now. While truckers are still protected from AB5, many in the industry are not willing to bet their future on SCOTUS.

AB5 was not only the assault on the trucking industry by California Democrats who were aggressively trying to unionize the industry and to impose environmental regulations on it.

Last year, the California Air Resources Board issued a press release boasting that it had taken a "bold step to reduce truck pollution". The bold step required switching to electric trucks.

"We are showing the world that we can move goods, grow our economy and finally dump dirty diesel," Jared Blumenfeld, California’s Secretary for Environmental Protection, sneered.

Jared and California certainly showed the world something.

While the ultimate truck ban was scheduled for 2045, an initial phase-in of 5% to 9% begins in 2024. Last year, California's DMV began refusing to register thousands of trucks with an estimated 100,000 trucks under threat. With "green" trucks costing $70,000 more, this was a non-starter for already troubled independent owner-operators and even larger companies.

That was part of the plan.

California Democrats and their environmentalist special interests had set out to crush the state’s ports and trucking industry. Had everything gone as planned, this would have been a slow and gradual process. Costs would have crept up and deliveries would have fallen off without an immediate catastrophic impact. But then the pandemic and its consequences arrived.

Business at California’s ports dropped during the pandemic. The loss of traffic convinced trucking companies and owner operators who were already battered by AB5 and the green truck ban that it was better to just downsize or pull out entirely. And when port activity rebounded, there was a huge hole in the delivery infrastructure that backed up the entire system.

Biden called for ports to operate around the clock, but that’s not going to magically bring back thousands of trucks or truckers. California Democrats still haven’t changed their regulations and without that, there’s no incentive or even legal structure that would allow trucks to operate.

The resulting disaster is likely to accelerate the ongoing shift of shipping from California ports. Democrats imposed their green shakedown not only on truckers, but on shipping. With companies moving to Texas, Houston was already becoming a more appealing alternative. It’s now at capacity as everyone is looking for alternatives to the California economic disaster area.

But much of our imports and exports still depend on the California bottleneck that begins with Communist China and ends in Communist California. The red-to-red pipeline has savaged our economy and wrecked imports and exports. Newsom’s survival and the Dem legislative supermajority which passes more extreme leftist regulations every session means that things will only get worse. A radical party that actively seeks to dismantle the economy is in power in Sacramento and its regulations have the ability to hold our entire economy hostage.

What happens in California unfortunately doesn’t stay there unless it’s waiting on a ship.

 

[West]

California Drove Truckers Out of Business. Now Store Shelves Are Empty | Frontpage Mag

Daniel Greenfield, a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the Freedom Center, is an investigative journalist and writer focusing on the radical Left and Islamic

www.frontpagemag.com

California Drove Truckers Out of Business. Now Store Shelves Are Empty

Democrat regulations are holding the entire economy hostage.

Fri Oct 22, 2021
Daniel Greenfield
85 comments

After a long cross-country flight, I made it out of LAX and into an Uber. I wasn’t in the mood to talk, but the driver was. And hearing that I was a journalist, he wanted to tell me a story. I’ve heard a lot of stories over the years, but this may have been the most important one I let go.

He hadn’t always been driving an Uber at 11:30 at night. Not all that long ago he used to have his own business with 7 trucks before he was bankrupted by California’s insane regulations.

I listened, but didn’t pay enough attention. The impact of California’s Democrat legislative supermajority on truckers was just another data point alongside what was happening to freelancers of all kinds and a lot of small businesses. Stories like this were everywhere and there was little interest in them even in conservative circles outside the tarnished golden state.

Back then we still lived in a world where you could walk into a thousand stores with fully stocked shelves. People ordered from Amazon and expected its burgeoning last mile delivery service to make products magically appear overnight. Just in time inventory systems were more efficient and any day now products would be delivered by self-driving cars or aerial drones.

2020 and 2021 have given this Big Tech fantasy world and the rest of us a good kicking.

The massive supply chain mess that’s leaving stores empty and orders unfulfilled doesn’t have a single point of failure, but dozens of them. China’s energy shortages, the overhyped predictive powers of Big Data, the fragility of the global economy, fuel costs, and welfare state worker shortages are all players.

But California’s truck bans are a key link in the great failure chain.

While I was riding home that night, California trucking companies were going bankrupt at a rapid rate. Few outside the industry were paying attention or understood what that might mean.

2019 was described as a “bloodbath” for the trucking industry with 640 trucking companies across the country filing for bankruptcy in just the first half of the year. Thousands of truck drivers were left unemployed. Many went into the expanding last mile delivery business, some as contractors for Amazon. But California truckers and businesses had their own special woes.

Two years ago, Governor Newsom signed the Democrat supermajority's Assembly Bill 5 into law. While AB5 was billed as a crackdown on Uber and Lyft, forcing the companies to treat l freelance contractors as employees, the gig economy companies pushed Proposition 22 so that they were the only ones exempt from the law. (A Democrat judge has since illegally blocked the approved ballot measure while falsely claiming that it was unconstitutional.)

AB5 however was less about Uber than it was about outlawing freelance employees in order to force them into unions. The union power grab inconvenienced Uber and Lyft, but crushed freelance workers in a variety of fields including journalism. One of the fields was trucking.

Over the summer, the California Trucking Association actually went to the Supreme Court to fight AB5 and allow owners and operators to use independent contractors. The CTA listed 70,000 owner operators. In the years since AB5, Ubers have become scarcer and more expensive, which is what the law was actually designed to do, but the consequences to the trucking industry have been far worse albeit invisible to most people until now. While truckers are still protected from AB5, many in the industry are not willing to bet their future on SCOTUS.

AB5 was not only the assault on the trucking industry by California Democrats who were aggressively trying to unionize the industry and to impose environmental regulations on it.

Last year, the California Air Resources Board issued a press release boasting that it had taken a "bold step to reduce truck pollution". The bold step required switching to electric trucks.

"We are showing the world that we can move goods, grow our economy and finally dump dirty diesel," Jared Blumenfeld, California’s Secretary for Environmental Protection, sneered.

Jared and California certainly showed the world something.

While the ultimate truck ban was scheduled for 2045, an initial phase-in of 5% to 9% begins in 2024. Last year, California's DMV began refusing to register thousands of trucks with an estimated 100,000 trucks under threat. With "green" trucks costing $70,000 more, this was a non-starter for already troubled independent owner-operators and even larger companies.

That was part of the plan.

California Democrats and their environmentalist special interests had set out to crush the state’s ports and trucking industry. Had everything gone as planned, this would have been a slow and gradual process. Costs would have crept up and deliveries would have fallen off without an immediate catastrophic impact. But then the pandemic and its consequences arrived.

Business at California’s ports dropped during the pandemic. The loss of traffic convinced trucking companies and owner operators who were already battered by AB5 and the green truck ban that it was better to just downsize or pull out entirely. And when port activity rebounded, there was a huge hole in the delivery infrastructure that backed up the entire system.

Biden called for ports to operate around the clock, but that’s not going to magically bring back thousands of trucks or truckers. California Democrats still haven’t changed their regulations and without that, there’s no incentive or even legal structure that would allow trucks to operate.

The resulting disaster is likely to accelerate the ongoing shift of shipping from California ports. Democrats imposed their green shakedown not only on truckers, but on shipping. With companies moving to Texas, Houston was already becoming a more appealing alternative. It’s now at capacity as everyone is looking for alternatives to the California economic disaster area.

But much of our imports and exports still depend on the California bottleneck that begins with Communist China and ends in Communist California. The red-to-red pipeline has savaged our economy and wrecked imports and exports. Newsom’s survival and the Dem legislative supermajority which passes more extreme leftist regulations every session means that things will only get worse. A radical party that actively seeks to dismantle the economy is in power in Sacramento and its regulations have the ability to hold our entire economy hostage.

What happens in California unfortunately doesn’t stay there unless it’s waiting on a ship.

Good informative piece.

 

[marsh]

Biden Can't Figure Out How to Unload Container Ships in LA - Now Price of Shipping a Container Is 4.5 Times What It Was Last Year | The Gateway Pundit | by Joe Hoft

The cost of shipping goods from Asia to the US have exploded under the Biden regime.

www.thegatewaypundit.com

Biden Can’t Figure Out How to Unload Container Ships in LA – Now Price of Shipping a Container Is 4.5 Times What It Was Last Year

By Joe Hoft
Published October 23, 2021 at 2:30pm

The costs of shipping goods from Asia to the US have exploded under the Biden regime.

We’ve reported how ships are parked offshore near the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach and are not being unloaded. Biden said he’d fix it but nothing has happened. Wait till he tells Americans they can’t have toys for their kids for Christmas because he can’t figure out how to get some ships from Asia unloaded.

Biden’s inaction is beginning to have quite the cost. Breitbart reports:

Shipping costs are surging around the globe, causing the price of sending a container from Asia to the West Coast to increase many times over.

When Donald Trump was president in 2020, the price to ship a container from Asia to California was $3,800. That price spiked to $17,000 in October of 2021, according to supply chain technology company Freightos.

Freightos also revealed that shipping to the east coast is more expensive than the west coast, with rates reaching $20,000.

The increase in shipping cost is primarily due to the supply chain crunch, which is jamming seaports, trucking companies, and warehouses.

Sleepy Joe Biden is lost and overwhelmed as well. He can’t even figure out how to unload container ships in LA.

 

[Dozdoats]

Biden can't unload his pants, much less anything else.

 

[Donghe Surfer]

California Drove Truckers Out of Business. Now Store Shelves Are Empty | Frontpage Mag

Daniel Greenfield, a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the Freedom Center, is an investigative journalist and writer focusing on the radical Left and Islamic

www.frontpagemag.com

Good piece.
Hope California economy free-dives into the fires of hell, because of its stupidity (and I say that with a sibling living there who hates da guv'ner).

 

[marsh]

Zerohedge

ZeroHedge - On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero

www.zerohedge.com

With A Record 79 Container Ships Waiting Off The SoCal Coast, A Scary Supply-Chain Solution Emerges

SATURDAY, OCT 23, 2021 - 04:30 PM

As we discussed yesterday, when looking at the recent dip in sky high container shipping rates, there was some fleeting hope that Southern California port congestion had turned the corner. The number of container ships waiting offshore dipped to the low 60s and high 50s from a record high of 73 on Sept. 19, trans-Pacific spot rates plateaued, the Biden administration unveiled aspirations for 24/7 port ops, and electricity shortages curbed Chinese factory output.



Alas, it was not meant to be, and despite the very serious jawboning coming out of the White House, the time ships are stuck waiting offshore continues to lengthen. There are simply too many vessels arriving with too much cargo for terminals, trucks, trains and warehouses to handle, and according to the Marine Exchange of Southern California, 79 container ships were waiting off Los Angeles and Long Beach on Thursday, yet another all-time record.



In light of this record parking lot that has formed outside of LA...


Container ships off LA/LB on Friday morning. Map: MarineTraffic
... it is hardly a surprise that container dwell times have steadily increased over the summer and now into the Fall, increasing to an average of 5.9 days in September - up nearly 2.5 days since the April low of 3.6 days, according to Goldman Sachs.



Goldman also notes that the proportion of containers that have been dwelling for longer than five days were 32.8% of total containers in September - up from 13.1% in the spring and 21.2% in September 2020 when dwell time began to accelerate as consumer demand returned.



While it is obvious, it is important to note that higher dwell times at the ports and terminals lead to less overall supply chain efficiency and can impact volume throughput. For example, JBHT recently reported during their 3Q21 earnings call that congestion led to lower container turn efficiency to 1.62 from the end of 2Q21.

Chassis also saw accelerated street dwell times in the most recent week (week 40) in the Port of L.A. and Long Beach. August (Weeks 37-39) averaged a street dwell time of 7 days before increasing to 9.0 days in Week 40 for 20 ft. chassis. 40/45 ft. chassis similarly jumped in mid-October to 10 days from the 8.5 day average over the previous three weeks.



It's not all bad news: in recent weeks, rails have seen an opposite trend as fluidity has continued to improve in their networks starting at the ports, decreasing their average dwell time to 5.5 days in September from 11.8 day high in June.



As a result of the surge in client interest in supply chain issues on the West Coast, Goldman recently introduced the PMI Manufacturing Suppliers’ delivery times index from IHS Markit to its supply chain congestion tracker. Purchasing managers respond to IHS Markit’s PMI surveys indicating if it is taking their suppliers more or less time to provide inputs to their manufacturing. Above 50 indicates that supply delivery times are faster and below indicates that delivery is slower. Manufacturers have reported significant increases in delivery times, with the current index level in September at 16.6 - down significantly from July 2020 of 47.2.



On an inverted basis, the index has increased 62% YoY in September reflecting the large increase in supplier delays



On a roll, Goldman then makes another patently obvious observation, noting that congestion at the ports ultimately leads to higher rates in ocean freight, and it can also have an impact to air and truck rates as well.

To be sure, as noted above, while prices have started to abate from record levels in mid-September in ocean freight (don't get your hopes up - this is entirely due to another temporary lockdown in Chinese supply chains, a result of the reduction in manufacturing due to China's ongoing power crunch and energy crisis), they still increased +350% YoY in the week ending October 15. Prices will remain elevated until congestion abates or demand normalizes; it is unclear when either of these will happen.



More ominously, as of October 18, airfreight from Hong Kong to North America was $10.45 per Kg, up +97% YoY from $5.31.



Goldman's bottom line is that the data the bank tracks for supply chain congestion lines up with company commentaries during conferences in August and at the start of this current 3Q21 earnings season. In the short term, the bank continues to expect the increase in congestion to benefit asset light and freight forwarders from increased rates and the need to facilitate moves that asset based providers do not have the capacity to handle (translation: it will negatively impact everyone else who is reliant on Just In Time supply chains). Moreover, overall supply chain tightness should help keep truckload rates elevated, and the parcel sector could see ongoing benefit from shippers forced to use air capacity if unable to gain ocean container capacity.

Of course, this being Goldman, the bank has to end on a positive note, and in its forecast writes that while ports reflect congestion in the short term, "we do expect some slight easing as we pass peak season shipping in late October for the holiday season and more abatement as we pass Chinese New Year in early 2022." The bank also expects the abatement in congestion to positively benefit the rails as well as intermodal participants (such as JB Hunt) as fluidity improves and congestion related costs and service issues begin to abate.

Alas, unlike Goldman, we don't see any easing in the short- to medium-term, for several reasons. First, there is no catalyst on the horizon that will lead to both a reduction in demand for goods (over services) over the next 6 months especially with winter coming. Second, the downstream chaos in the supply chain alone means that everything has to align perfectly for the blockages to be resolved.

However, that won't happen because between the continued labor shortages, the lack of infrastructure to resume smooth operations, and a supply pipeline that it snarled on both ends (Chinese energy crisis, US labor crisis), the chaos will continue indefinitely. This is a key point made recently by Citi's Matt King in his latest must read presentation (available to pro subs), asking if the economy is like a "double pendulum" where a "slightly harder push changes the system behavior entirely."



It gets worse though: so far the supply chain bottlenecks have not materialized in any tangible shortages at the retail level where rising prices have successfully offset rising demand (with a few notable exceptions). However, if and when the supply crisis hits a tipping point and photos of empty shelves once again flood the media, there will be a surge to hoard similar to what we saw in March 2020 as the panicked population buys first and asks questions later, at which point the chaos in the system will once again spill over. Or, as King puts it, "the desire to buy is inversely proportional to the stock available."



Which leaves us with the painful conclusion: if we want a return to the previous supply-chain equilibrium, the system needs to do more than just ramp up supply: it also needs to squash demand or the wild gyrations will continue.



That means inducing another artificial recession to cripple demand, something which we doubt the Democrats controlling the 78-year-old in the White House will be able to stomach.

 

[Dozdoats]

But to the Demonrats, the model IS the reality.

 

[marsh]

Zerohedge

ZeroHedge - On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero

www.zerohedge.com

Supply Chain Disruptions Curtail Union Pacific's Intermodal Volumes

SATURDAY, OCT 23, 2021 - 06:30 PM
By Joanna Marsh of Freightwaves,

Extended chassis dwell times and a lack of dray drivers dampened Union Pacific’s intermodal traffic in the third quarter, but the railroad hopes volumes will rebound once the disruptions clear and consumer activity picks up post-pandemic, executives said during UP’s third-quarter earnings call.

“There are some really good-looking markers that tell us the economy is in a pretty strong place. And maybe we’ll stay there for a while,” President and CEO Lance Fritz said on the Thursday call.

“There’s a lot of cash on deposit accounts that people are sitting on. And that is dry powder yet to be deployed in spending. As long as consumers continue to spend on things, that’s really good for the goods economy, which of course is the part of the economy that we participate in.”

Fritz continued:

“[Once] the COVID pandemic gets under control and [we] get continued signs of normalcy … consumers will spend that money and the low inventory-to-sales ratio is going to drive a need for continued stocking. … Certainly as we head into 2022, it looks like a strong environment.”

Easing supply chain disruptions means putting more attention on ensuring adequate workforce numbers among dray drivers, at warehouse and distribution centers, and at the ports, according to Fritz.

“I believe the Biden administration has identified basically increasing the throughput capability and the capacity capability, and understands the need to help put labor that’s available into those jobs and make more labor available for the jobs. … If we could snap our fingers on the back end, we would love to see more dray and warehouse distribution capacity. That’s the first thing that we would love to see. I think that would fundamentally change the street time for chassis and boxes,” Fritz said.

UP’s intermodal volumes in the third quarter slipped 6% year-over-year to 809,000 units, although intermodal revenue rose 8% to $1.15 billion. UP attributed the volume decline to the tight dray market and not having enough dray capacity to support the overall supply chain.

To ease supply chain disruptions inland, the railroad has been utilizing its previously idled Global III facility near Chicago, and it has placed 5,000 cars strategically throughout the network, according to Eric Gehringer, executive vice president of operations. UP has also extended hours at selected ramps, and it has changed the hours of operation at the ICTF in Los Angeles to run 24 hours a day, Gehringer said.

“We can take the volume. We can handle the volume efficiently, [but] we need the back end of the supply chain with warehouse capacity, warehouse labor, dray capacity and dray labor to be there to answer that call,” he said.

As supply chain issues subside, opportunities to provide customers with visibility on network flows should be a focus for UP and the broader industry, Fritz said.

The railroad should “keep our eyes open on opportunities to basically be better for customers. Step one in that has a lot to do with transparency and visibility in the existing supply chain across partners,” Fritz said. “We’re working very hard in that space with each of the supply chain partners that we have, whether it’s a technology platform that we can all use to see everybody’s KPIs and current status, or something more.”

Third-quarter financial results
Despite supply chain challenges globally and domestically, UP achieved an operating ratio (OR) of 56.3%, a third-quarter record and up from an OR of 55.1% in the second quarter of 2021.

Investors sometimes use OR to gauge the financial health of a company, with a lower OR implying improved health. UP’s third-quarter net profit was $1.7 billion, or $2.57 per diluted share, compared with net profit of $1.4 billion, or $2.01 per diluted share, in the third quarter of 2020.

“The Union Pacific team successfully navigated global supply chain disruptions, a major bridge outage and additional weather events to produce strong quarterly revenue growth and financial results,” Fritz said in a release. “In the quarter, the team delivered solid core pricing gains, leveraged business development to produce a positive business mix, and generated productivity to offset flat volume. We also set a quarterly record for fuel consumption rate as we continue to make strides towards our goal to reduce our absolute greenhouse gas emissions.”

Although third-quarter volumes were flat year-over-year, freight revenue rose 12% to $5.17 million on “higher fuel surcharges, strong pricing gains and a positive mix,” said Kenny Rocker, executive vice president for marketing and sales.

“Gains in our bulk and industrial segments were driven by market strength and our business development efforts. Those gains were offset by declines in our premium business group, as our served markets continue to be impacted by semiconductor chip shortages and global supply chain disruptions,” Rocker said.

Operating expenses rose 9%, to $3.13 million, on an 81% increase in fuel expenses.



Meanwhile, wildfires and other weather events challenged UP’s network operations, with quarterly freight car velocity down 13% to 195 daily miles per car, UP said.

UP maintained its 55% OR target for 2022, although it now expects volume growth closer to 5% for 2021, down from a previous guidance of 7%.

“Industrial volumes remain consistent and strong across many sectors like forest products, metals and plastics. So we are bullish on several fronts,” CFO Jennifer Hamann said. “But as you are also well aware, headwinds in autos and intermodal persist. Global supply chain disruptions, semiconductor shortages and the additional pressure with international intermodal volumes … continue to constrain our premium volumes.”

 

[Voortrekker]

California can go dark.

Fixed it for you. Go Brandon.

 

[marsh]

Biden’s vaccine mandate has cargo giants in a pre-holiday panic

The trade association for UPS, FedEx and others has written the Office of Business and Management warning about further supply chain disruptions.

www.politico.com

Biden’s vaccine mandate has cargo giants in a pre-holiday panic
The trade association for UPS, FedEx and others has written the Office of Business and Management warning about further supply chain disruptions.

Cargo containers sit stacked on ships at the Port of Los Angeles on Wednesday in San Pedro, Calif. | Ringo H.W. Chiu/AP Photo

By NATASHA KORECKI
10/21/2021 08:46 PM EDT

A trade group for air cargo giants like UPS and FedEx is sounding the alarm over an impending Dec. 8 vaccine deadline imposed by President Joe Biden, complaining it threatens to wreak havoc at the busiest time of the year — and add yet another kink to the supply chain.

“We have significant concerns with the employer mandates announced on Sept. 9, 2021, and the ability of industry members to implement the required employee vaccinations by Dec. 8, 2021,” Stephen Alterman, president of the Cargo Airline Association, wrote in a letter sent to the Biden administration and obtained by POLITICO.

The letter, sent to the Office of Management and Budget , asks the administration to postpone the deadline until “the first half of 2022.” At issue is the requirement by the Biden administration that federal workers be fully vaccinated by Dec. 8. Unlike private businesses, companies that act as federal contractors cannot opt out by instead submitting their workforces to frequent Covid testing.

The deadline has been hailed by public health officials as a way of increasing vaccination rates as the country continues to struggle with the Covid-19 pandemic. But business groups and conservatives have warned that it could have damaging economic impacts. The deadline brushes right up against the peak holiday season and as some of the biggest cargo distribution companies, including UPS and FedEx, are already battling unprecedented labor shortages.


White House attempts to quell fears of holiday supply chain issues

Play Video
https://www.politico.com/3e67bf72-6c73-4893-bf1a-bab418542ad3 2;52 min

In comments Alterman submitted to the Department of Transportation, he noted, “the looming December 8 mandate for having fully vaccinat[ed] workforces creates a significant supply chain problem.”

Some of the members of the Cargo association include FedEx, UPS, DHL Express and Atlas Air, which runs cargo flights for Amazon. Alterman noted that many of these cargo carriers are helping move vital medical supplies — including vaccines to combat the ongoing pandemic.

“This problem is further exacerbated by the fact that we are already experiencing a worker shortage, both in the air and on the ground, and any loss of employees who refuse to be vaccinated will adversely impact needed operations,” he wrote.

For weeks, industry officials have held talks with the administration over the Dec. 8 deadline and vaccine requirements, including communicating the various attempts to hold vaccine drives for workers and better educate them on the benefits of the vaccine. But, they relayed, they faced significant difficulties meeting the tight deadline, two sources familiar with the discussions said.



BY NICK NIEDZWIADEK
One of the sources noted that the convergence of the holiday season, the quick turnaround on the deadline and a worker shortage amid some vaccine resistance created “a perfect storm” for contractors involved in the delivery business.

They believed it was nearly impossible to meet the federal requirement and relayed that their legal departments were still assessing how to implement the order.

“We are reviewing the Executive Order and what it means for UPS and our people,” said Kara Ross, UPS spokesperson. “We’re urging all of our employees to get vaccinated. Vaccination remains the best way for our employees, communities and company to stay healthy and strong.”

A FedEx representative acknowledged on Thursday it was “engaged with the relevant government agencies,” about the Dec. 8 deadline.

“The health and safety of our FedEx team members continues to be our top priority. We strongly encourage team members to get vaccinated and continue to communicate on the importance and access to Covid-19 vaccines,” Chris Allen, a FedEx Global spokesperson said in a statement.

The Biden administration has increasingly used the concept of vaccine mandates as a tool to try and fight the pandemic. In September, the president imposed the restrictions on federal workers and contractors but also issued an order dictating that the owners of private businesses that employ more than 100 people to mandate the vaccine. Those private businesses, however, are able to offer an opt-out for employees who submit to frequent testing and who take safety precautions, like wearing masks. Airline pilots for some commercial carriers have for some time also chafed against the Dec. 8 mandate, in particular unionized pilots for Southwest Airlines, which have sued over the issue.

The White House this week insisted there would be no disruption to critical services during the holiday season because of those who don’t comply with the mandate by the deadline.



Biden announces sweeping new vaccine mandates that could effect 100 million Americans

Play Video
https://www.politico.com/8c35acdb-1a18-4086-a514-62053ed5c82b 4:26 min

At a recent news conference, Jeff Zients, who heads the White House’s Covid task force said those who aren’t vaccinated by a given deadline wouldn’t lose their job but would first enter “a period of education and counseling.”

“It's important to remember this is a process and the point here is to get people vaccinated, not to — not to punish them,” Zients said. “So, agencies will not be removing employees from federal service until after they've gone through a process of education and counseling. And just like federal agencies, contractors will follow standard processes for accommodations and enforcement among their employees.”

Zients continued, “The requirements for federal workers and contractors will not cause disruptions to government services that people depend on.”

In his comments submitted to the DOJ, however, Alterman said that hundreds of thousands of short-term workers had yet to be hired to help assist in the holiday workload.

“We therefore request that the Administration take steps to recognize this problem and to delay implementation of the vaccine mandate into 2022,” Alterman wrote.

 

[marsh]

Zerohedge

ZeroHedge - On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero

www.zerohedge.com

40 Shipping Containers Adrift Off US Pacific Coast After Vessel Hit By Rough Seas

BY TYLER DURDEN
SATURDAY, OCT 23, 2021 - 08:00 PM

The global supply chain is more snarled than ever, forcing container ships to stack truck-size intermodal containers to the brim in a technique called containerization. The more shipping containers loaded up on a vessel, the more prone it becomes to an accident at sea in adverse weather conditions.

That's precisely what happened last night, off the Pacific Coast, when stormy seas knocked 40 shipping containers off a vessel. The incident occurred when an inbound container ship about 43 miles west of the Strait of Juan de Fuca entrance was listed to its side due to a storm.



The Coast Guard dispatched a helicopter from Port Angeles, Washington, to investigate the incident. What they found were 35 containers floating and unable to find the rest.



This weekend, a powerful storm is on the Pacific Coast and is responsible for heavy seas and high winds that put container ships at risk of losing cargo.

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1451724730508005382

View: https://twitter.com/i/status/1451724730508005382


In April, reports surged of containers being lost as sea as vessels were being stacked to full capacity amid strained supply chains. The unintended consequence of packing ships full of cargo is that they become more accident-prone in rough waters. Add this potential risk to an already fragile supply chain that is experiencing record congestion at ports.

 

[Shadow]

Which leaves us with the painful conclusion: if we want a return to the previous supply-chain equilibrium, the system needs to do more than just ramp up supply: it also needs to squash demand or the wild gyrations will continue.

They allude to inducing a recession. But the COVID19 shot and their intentions with population reduction will also reduce demand,

Shadow

 

[marsh]

Zerohedge

ZeroHedge - On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero

www.zerohedge.com

Port Congestion Could Be Worse Than "Lehman Crash", Flexport CEO Warns

SUNDAY, OCT 24, 2021 - 02:00 PM

"The ports shutting down is worse than Lehman Brothers failing. Both can lead to catastrophic failures of all counterparties depending on them. But with Lehman, the government could just print tons of money to flood the banks with liquidity," Ryan Petersen, chief executive officer of logistics company Flexport, warned Friday after touring logjammed U.S. West Coast ports.

Petersen said his firm hired a boat captain to tour Los Angeles and Long Beach ports, which account for 40% of all shipping containers entering the U.S. He said during the three-hour loop through the ports, passing every single terminal, "we saw less than a dozen containers get unloaded."



He said the twin ports have hundreds of cranes but only "seven were even operating and those that were seemed to be going pretty slow." He said the bottleneck that everyone now agrees on is "yard space" and that "terminals are simply overflowing with containers, which means they no longer have space to take in new containers either from ships or land. It's a true traffic jam."

"The bottleneck right now is not the cranes. It's yard space at the container terminals. And it's empty chassis to come clear those containers out," he said.

The twin ports appear to be at a standstill even though President Biden issued a directive last week to keep them operating on a 24/7 basis. But that seems to be not enough because the president has weighed the use of the National Guard to alleviate constraints.

Petersen suggested a "simple plan" for the state and federal government to partner with ports, truckers, and everyone else in the chain to create temporary container yards that stack empty ones up to six high instead of the limit of two.

This would "free up tens of thousands of chassis that right now are just storing containers on wheels. Those chassis can immediately be taken to the ports to haul away the containers."

He said it was necessary to correct this bottleneck because it's a "negative feedback loop that is rapidly cycling out of control that will destroy the global economy if it continues unabated."

Goldman Sachs' Jordan Alliger agreed and told clients to monitor the ports. He said, "the most notable congestion indicator is the number of container ships anchored waiting to offload their freight returned to 70 ships anchored on October 18 after hitting a record of 73 on September 19, compared to their pre-pandemic average of 0-1 ships."



Petersen is right. The monetary wonks at the Federal Reserve are way over their heads. They can't print their way out of this shipping crisis they helped sparked by unleashing unprecedented monetary injections into capital markets over the last 19 months. The circulatory system of the global economy risks breaking as port congested worsens.

 

[marsh]

Zerohedge

ZeroHedge - On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero

www.zerohedge.com

Shadow Inflation: Shipping Costs Are Up Way More Than You Think

SUNDAY, OCT 24, 2021 - 03:30 PM
By Greg Miller of FreightWaves,

Name something that costs far more than it did before the pandemic that simultaneously gives you far less value for your money than it used to.

Of all the goods and services in the world, it’s hard to find a better pick than ocean container shipping. As rates have skyrocketed, delivery reliability has collapsed amid historic port congestion. Ocean cargo shippers are paying more than they ever have before for the worst service they’ve ever experienced.

The true COVID-era inflation rate for ocean shipping, when adjusted upward to account for lower quality, is much higher than the rise in freight rates.



Rates spike, quality plummets
For businesses that rely on imports and exports, ocean shipping is a necessity, not a luxury, so pricing rises if demand exceeds supply regardless of how bad the service is. U.K.-based consultancy Drewry recently upped its forecast and now predicts that global container rates will increase by an average 126% this year versus 2020, including both spot and contract rates across all trade lanes.

Norway-based data provider Xeneta sees most long-term contract rates in the Asia-West Coast route averaging $4,000-$5,000 per forty-foot equivalent unit, double rates of $2,000-$2,500 per FEU at this time last year. Spot rates have risen much more than that, both in dollar and percentage terms. The Freightos Baltic Daily Index currently assesses the Asia-West Coast spot rate (including premium charges) at $17,377 per FEU, 4.5 times the spot rate a year ago.

Daily assessment in $ per FEU. Data: Freightos Baltic Daily Index. Chart: FreightWaves SONAR (To learn more about FreightWaves SONAR, click here.)
Service metrics have sunk as rates have risen. Denmark-based consultancy Sea-Intelligence reported that global carrier schedule reliability fell to 33.6% in August, an all-time low. In August 2019, pre-COVID, reliability was more than double that. Sea-Intelligence calculated that the global delays for late vessels was 7.57 days, almost double the number of days late in August 2019.

Charts: Sea-Intelligence. Data sources: Sea-Intelligence, GLP report issue 121
U.S.-based supply chain visibility platform Project44 highlighted the diverging paths of pricing and quality by contrasting its data on average days delayed with Xeneta’s short-term rate data. Between August 2020 and this August, project44 found that the monthly median of days delayed on voyages from Yantian, China, to Los Angeles increased 425%, from 2.46 days to 12.93. Over the same period, average short-term rates jumped 102%.

Chart: p44. Data sources: p44 and Xeneta

Shadow inflation
Neil Irwin of The New York Times recently wrote about “shadow inflation” — when you pay the same as before for something that’s not as good as it used to be, so you’re effectively paying more. A pre-COVID example of shadow inflation: the infamous Lay’s potato chip incident of 2014. Lay’s intentionally included about five chips less per bag, lowering content from 10 ounces to 9.5, yet still charged $4.29 per bag, meaning customers were paying (and Frito-Lay was making) 5.3% more per ounce of chips.

The opposite — and until COVID, far more common — scenario is when product quality rises faster than pricing, decreasing effective inflation, as in the case of computers and other tech products. This downward effect on inflation is incorporated into the Consumer Price Index (CPI) via so-called hedonic adjustments.

As recounted by Irwin and Full Stack Economics author Alan Cole, COVID flipped hedonic adjustments in the other direction, toward lower quality per dollar paid, the equivalent of inflation. Pointing to restaurants and hotels, Irwin wrote, “Many types of businesses facing supply disruptions and labor shortages have dealt with those problems not by raising prices (or not only by raising prices), but by taking steps that could give their customers a lesser experience.”

According to Cole, “Over the last 18 months … goods and services are getting worse faster than the official statistics acknowledge,” implying that “our inflation problem has actually been bigger than the official statistics suggest.”

Shadow inflation and container shipping
Ocean container shipping is an extreme example of the “services are getting worse” trend, despite enormous freight-rate inflation.

Measuring quality adjustments to inflation is inherently difficult, which is why very few CPI categories have hedonic adjustments. One way to do a back-of-the-envelope estimate of ocean shipping shadow inflation is to focus on time: the longer the delays, the less quality, the higher the cost fallout, the higher the effective inflation above and beyond the rise in freight rates.

Jason Miller, associate professor of supply chain management at Michigan State University’s Eli Broad College of Business, suggested using accounting of inventory carrying costs to measure the time effect.

“If I already own a product and I took possession of it overseas at the port of departure, and it’s on my balance sheet and it’s just sitting on the water, then in inventory management, there is a charge incurred every day it’s not sold,” he explained.

Miller explained, “There is the cost of capital. Every $100 in inventory is $100 that can’t be allocated elsewhere for a more value-producing purpose. There is also the cost due to obsolescence. It’s essentially opportunity costs. The longer the delay, the more additional costs from stockouts [as shelves empty] or the need to buy more safety stock.”

Rate rises affect different shippers differently
Whether it’s price inflation from rate hikes or indirect shadow inflation from slow service, different shippers are affected very differently.

On the rate side of the equation, Xeneta data shows a massive $20,000-per-FEU spread between the lowest price paid by large contract shippers in the trans-Pacific trade and highest price paid by small spot shippers.

Erik Devetak, chief data officer of Xeneta, told American Shipper, “We see the very bottom of the bottom of the long-term market at approximately $3,300 per FEU, although there are very few contracts at this price. On the other hand, we see the short-term market high up to $23,000 per FEU, again, in rare situations.”

In the latest edition of its Sunday Spotlight report, Sea-Intelligence analyzed how rate hikes affect different shippers and found a huge competitive advantage for larger shippers given this gaping freight spread.

Sea-Intelligence, using Xeneta data, estimated that a large importer on contract (in this case, in the Asia-Europe trade) shipping a 40-foot box with $250,000 of high-value cargo would see freight costs rise from 0.5% of the cargo value a year ago to 1.8% currently — an easily digestible increase. A small shipper in the spot market moving the same load would see freight costs jump from 0.7% of cargo value to 6.2%.

Sea-Intelligence then ran the same exercise with a low-value cargo worth $25,000. It said that in this case, the large contract shipper’s freight-to-cargo-value ratio rose from 5% last year to 18% currently, while the small spot shipper’s freight-to-cargo-value “exploded” from 7% to 62%.

Service delays affect different shippers differently
Rising rates affect high-value cargo the least because the freight rise equates to a small proportion of the cargo value. But with shadow inflation from voyage delays, it’s the opposite, according to Miller. Shipments of high-value goods get hit much harder than low-value goods.

Accounting carrying costs are derived from cargo value. The higher the cargo value, the higher the carrying costs. “Where these delays especially matter is for high-value imports,” said Miller. “It’s ironic. The importers that are least affected by high spot prices are the ones who are getting really hurt most by the delays.”

One example: A large importer pays $4,000 in freight under a contract to ship a high-value cargo of $250,000 worth of electronics in a 40-foot box. There is a 30% annual carrying cost, in part due to high obsolescence risk, thus a carrying cost of $205 per day, so a 10-day delay would equate to an accounting cost of $2,050, adding 51% on top of the freight cost.

A contrasting example: A small importer pays $15,000 in the spot market to ship a low-value cargo of $25,000 worth of retail products in a 40-footer, with a 20% annual carrying cost. A 10-day delay would equate to an accounting carrying cost of $137, just 1% more on top of the freight rate.

It’s not just high-value cargoes that suffer from delays, Miller continued. Obsolescence risk is key. On the high end of the value spectrum, that relates to goods like electronics; on the low end, to things like holiday items and seasonal fashion.

Another major factor: whether the delayed import item is a component in a manufacturing process. In that case, the cost of ocean shipping delays can be enormous, dwarfing the increase in freight rates.

American Shipper was recently contacted by a manufacturer that has a vital component of its production process trapped in containers aboard a Chinese container ship that has been at anchor waiting for a berth in Los Angeles/Long Beach since Sept. 13.

“When imports are actually inputs into a production process, and if a stockout is going to shut down a plant, you are now facing a huge opportunity cost,” warned Miller.

 

[marsh]

Zerohedge

ZeroHedge - On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero

www.zerohedge.com

Martin Armstrong: Are The US Supply Chain Disruptions Deliberate?

SUNDAY, OCT 24, 2021 - 12:30 PM
Authored by Martin Armstrong via ArmstrongEconomics.com,

Deputy Treasury Secretary Wally Adeyemo may have accidentally leaked the cause of America’s supply chain issues.

“The reality is the only way we’re going to get to a place where we work through this transition is if everyone in America and everyone around the world gets vaccinated,” Adeyemo admitted in an interview with ABC News.

Starve them out, let the dissenters suffer, and those who bought into this agenda will turn against them.

Adeyemo said that the Biden Administration has already provided “the resources the American people need to make it to the other side.”



Basically, everyone should give into the vaccine mandate or face the consequences. They are masking authoritarianism as utilitarianism. The vaccine has not been mandated at the federal level in the US, yet, but it is apparent that the government plans to make life as difficult as possible for those who do not obey.

Echoing the Fed, Adeyemo said that inflation is “transitory,” and “as part of the transition we are seeing higher pieces for some of the things people have to buy… That’s exactly why the president was focused in the American Rescue Plan in ensuring on getting stimulus into the hands of the American people, so they’d be able to buy the products they need.”

Yes, the government expects us, the Great Unwashed, to be thankful for their measly handouts to purchase unavailable products at an all-time high. There is a reason people have recently nicknamed the president “bare shelves Biden,” with the hashtags #BareShelvesBiden and #EmptyShelvesJoe becoming a viral sensation.

Although the Biden Administration met with the Ports of Long Beach and Los Angeles, which handles 40% of the nation’s goods, the promise of a 24/7 operation has not yet occurred. There is no ETA for when the ports will begin 24/7 operations either. Some ships are allegedly waiting 12 days at anchor before reaching the dock, and over 60 vessels are idled in the San Pedro Bay at the moment. With one of the nation’s busiest shopping holidays approaching (Black Friday) followed by ongoing seasonal shopping, this matter is likely to turn ugly.



Taking it a step further, the Democrats are also demanding that the GOP pass the multi-trillion dollar infrastructure bill and are now using it as leverage.

Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg stated, “One thing that has not been talked about enough is (Moody’s) finding about how the overall ‘Build Back Better’ vision is designed to reduce inflationary pressures. So if you care about inflation, you ought to care about not just the supply chain issues, not just the infrastructure things I work on, but also the provisions in ‘Build Back Better’ like paid family leave, like making it easier to afford childcare, like community college, that are going to give us a stronger labor force and help us deal with that major constraint on economic growth.”

Buttigieg also claimed that he knew with certainty that the supply chain crisis is expected to last well into 2022. Perhaps the issue will last into Socrates’ projected political Panic Cycle for 2023.