On Friday morning, West Coast port officials told CNN about a startling sight: Not a single cargo vessel had left China with goods for the two major West Coast ports in the past 12 hours. That hasn’t happened since the pandemic.
Six days ago, 41 vessels were scheduled to depart China for the San Pedro Bay Complex, which encompasses both the Port of Los Angeles and Port of Long Beach in California. On Friday, it was zero.
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“That’s cause for alarm,” said Mario Cordero, the CEO of the Port of Long Beach. “We are now seeing numbers in excess of what we witnessed in the pandemic” for cancellations and fewer vessel arrivals.
The busiest ports in the country are experiencing steep declines in cargo. The Port of Long Beach is seeing a 35-40% drop compared to normal cargo volume. The Port of Los Angeles had a 31% drop in volume this week, and the Port of New York and Jersey says it’s also bracing for a slowdown. On Wednesday, the Port of Seattle said it had zero container ships in the port, another anomaly that hasn’t happened since the pandemic.
“That’s because just nothing is being shipped over,” port commissioner Ryan Calkins told CNN’s Kaitlan Collins.
We all remember the pandemic, right? Where disruptions in global trade led to supply chain problems and helped to contribute to global inflation?
Good times, yes?
That was caused by an unexpected, worldwide outbreak of a novel virus.
The current fun is being done utterly and totally by choice!
“If things don’t change quickly, I’m talking about the uncertainty that we’re seeing, then we may be seeing empty products on the shelves. This is now going to be felt by the consumer in the coming 30 days,” said Cordero.
Upwards of 63% of the cargo that flows into the Port of Long Beach is from China — the largest share of any US port. But that number is down from 72% in 2016 as retailers shift away from China over simmering trade tensions.
Even so, China still represents a major source of imports into the United States. Maersk, the second largest shipping line in the world, told CNN the cargo volume between the United States and China has fallen by 30-40% compared to normal.
“If we don’t start to see a de-escalation of the situation with China, if we don’t start to see more of those trade deals, then we could be in a situation where some of these effects get more entrenched and are more adverse,” said Maersk CEO Vincent Clerc.
This will affect American consumers and lead to price increases in available goods because that’s how economics works. Less supply and constant, if not increased demand, leads to increased prices.
There is also the fact that people will lose jobs.
Meanwhile, Secretary of Commerce, Howard Lutnick, keeps grinning his way through interviews as if all of this is a combination of no big deal/something that is just happening as opposed to something being created by this administration.
I continue to not understand what opening of markets and lowering of tariffs he is talking about.
Again, I share the following:
Further, the “low tariff” that he notes is in place in the context of current negotiations, is still higher than when Trump came into office. It is all just so much confused, self-contradictory nonsense.
One last clip.
This is just nuts. While some businesses will eat some of the tariffs, those businesses are the ones doing the importing. You know: businesses in the US. And the notion that domestic producers won’t raise prices is insane and runs counter to how economics work.
