Free Republic

Strikes on Russian oil refineries have a significant impact on Russia’s ability to conduct warfare. Lieutenant General Ben Hodges, Commander of U.S. Forces Europe in 2014-17, stated this during the 16th annual Kyiv Security Forum. “Of course, attacks on oil refineries have a significant impact. Russia is less able to pay for this war, and it also deprives it of the necessary fuel to continue hostilities. I would recommend ignoring the calls for an end to such attacks.” The Lieutenant General emphasized that sanctions against Russia need to be strengthened. He also added that 2024 will be the year of...

Russia lost more than 1,000 soldiers, 22 tanks and 37 armored personnel vehicles on December 25, Ukraine's military has said, marking the end of a bruising few days for Moscow's armed forces in the war-torn country. Russia lost 1,010 fighters on Christmas Day, the Ukrainian military said on Tuesday, bringing Kyiv's tally of Russian personnel losses to 354,960 soldiers. Moscow also lost nearly two dozen tanks and tens of armored vehicles on December 25, Ukraine added in an operational update.

The Biden-Harris regime has announced a new “White House Council on Supply Chain Resilience.” This new council is charged with preventing such problems as we experienced in the famous “supply chain crisis” of 2021 and early 2022 that preceded, and contributed to creating the current economic downturn. Granted, the Biden-Harris regime had already created a “Supply Chain Disruptions Task Force” in the first months of 2021, virtually as soon as they changed the names and dress sizes on the White House letterhead, and that didn’t seem to help. Maybe they’re hoping we forgot about that one. But then again, maybe...

"On this, the 82nd anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor, Sal Mercogliano - maritime historian at Campbell University (@campbelledu) and former merchant mariner - joins the US Naval History Podcast to discuss the Third Wave at Pearl Harbor, Fuel Logistics in World War Two, and the issues surrounding the closing of Red Hill today in a potential war against China."

The push to exchange gas for electric in transportation is an idea that has ironically placed the proverbial cart in front of the horse. While the problems of an inadequate power grid, too few charging stations, short range, high costs, long recharging times, and battery fires are real, there are two gigantic issues looming that rival them all. Current state and federal gas-tax regulations siphon off more than $53 billion a year in tax revenue; for reference, about 67 cents from every gallon of gasoline purchased in New York, and around $1.18-per-gallon in California. Those taxes account for more than...

Trucking giant Yellow collapsed on Sunday, ceasing operations immediately and leaving some 30,000 workers without jobs. The closure is the biggest in terms of jobs and revenue in the U.S. trucking industry, according to The Wall Street Journal - which first reported its shutdown. The company, which received $700 million in federal COVID relief funds in 2020, is preparing to file for bankruptcy and is in talks to sell off all or parts of the business. The nearly 100-year-old firm is known for its competitive pricing and has more than 12,000 trucks shipping freight across the US for brands including...

* The growth in EV demand is outpacing the infrastructure needed to charge them, with experts predicting the need for more than a million new public EV charging stations in the U.S. by 2030 to accommodate the demand. * Both cobalt and silicon, which are crucial for renewable energy sources like EV batteries, are in oversupply, causing bearish pressure on their prices; increased output from the Democratic Republic of the Congo and China is a key reason behind this. * The production of grain-oriented electrical steel (GOES), necessary for the power sector and increasingly hard to source, is facing difficulties...

Ships are piling up in some West Coast ports and commercial shipping prices are spiking amid a labor fight between port operators and workers, threatening to trigger a new round of supply chain disruptions that could lead to shortages or higher prices. The fight is sparking concerns among lawmakers who worry surging container prices could ripple through the economy and hit all sorts of consumer goods in a repeat of supply chain problems following pandemic shutdowns. “The shippers I know are afraid of what might happen if we shut down our ports,” said Rep. Val Hoyle (D-Ore.), a member of...

If farmers and ranchers don’t produce enough food, we don’t eat. So we should always be very thankful for our hard working farmers and ranchers. Unfortunately, farms and ranches all over the United States have been hit by a string of disasters in recent months, and as a result food production has taken a turn for the worse. So does that mean that we should expect that there will soon be shortages of certain items? Unfortunately, it appears that is likely to be the case. For example, it is being reported that approximately 90 percent of Georgia’s peach crop for...

Shows fire, soldier with yellow stripes on uniform talking into radio.

Owners of electric vehicles are finally admitting that recharging away from home is a total "logistical nightmare," between finding charging stations, and the fact that in the best case scenarios it takes 30 to 40 minutes, and up to two hours, to recharge."We're going through the planning process of how easily Maddie can get from Albany to Gettysburg [College] and where she can charge the car," said YouTube personality Steve Hammes, who leased a Hyunday Kona Electric SUV for his 17-year-old daughter, Maddie."It makes me a little nervous. We want fast chargers that take 30 to 40 minutes -- it...

People on the other side of the planet are dropping dead from starvation right now, but most people don’t even realize that this is happening. Unfortunately, most people just assume that everything is fine and dandy. If you are one of those people that believe that everything is just wonderful, I would encourage you to pay close attention to the details that I am about to share with you. Global hunger is rapidly spreading, and that is because global food supplies have been getting tighter and tighter. If current trends continue, we could potentially be facing a nightmare scenario before...

California tomato farmers are now struggling with a water scarcity brought about by the worst drought in 1,200 years. This dilemma that affects the production of processing tomatoes, the variety that gets canned and used in commercial kitchens to make some of the most popular foods, could possibly cause the imminent soaring of tomato-based sauce prices in the market. “We desperately need rain,” Mike Montna, head of the California Tomato Growers Association, said in an interview. “We are getting to a point where we do not have inventory left to keep fulfilling the market demand.” This United States region is...

In a recent interview with Bloomberg, the executive vice president of UPS asserted that “regionalization” of the supply chain is critical to economic stability in a world where geopolitical conflicts continue expanding. The word “regionalization” is basically another way to describe decentralization, a concept which the UPS representative obviously did not want to dive into. Almost every trade expert and industry insider admits that supply chain problems are going to persist into the foreseeable future, and some are starting to also admit (in a roundabout way) that localized production and trade models are the key to economic survival. Think globally,...

While in graduate school Matt Schwartz had an epiphany. At the time, he was learning about the food system as part of Stanford University’s Earth Program and also participating in an internship with food tech investor Dave Friedberg, and it was this combination of advanced education with a front-row seat to food tech innovation that helped him to see the future. “That’s when I came to believe that things were heading towards fresh,” Schwartz told me this week in a Zoom interview. “That we need to move towards a more nutrient-dense form of eating, a less calorie dense form of...

A Supreme Court decision may force over 70,000 truck owner-operators in California to stop driving, creating another choke point in the already stressed West Coast logistics networks. The AB5 law restricts the use of independent contractors and will soon be enforced against the trucking industry after the court declined to hear their appeal. The California Trucking Association said in a statement that gasoline has been poured on the fire that is the ongoing supply chain crisis, and the decision by the Supreme Court could deny a judicial review of a lower court ruling. In an end-of-term orders list released in...

Over the many years of reporting maritime news, the idea that China could militarize its commercial maritime fleet has been dismissed by most of the shipping community, but a new report published by the US Naval War College shows that this is not only a possibility but has already been accomplished. This report comes weeks after a CSIS report detailed how China militarized its commercial shipyards.

Spain is expected to produce its lowest volume of fruit in the last 40 years due to frost that hit its fruit-production regions in early April1, 2, especially the Ebro Valley – one of Europe’s most important producing areas of sweet fruit. Manel Simon, the general director of the Catalan fruit association – Afrucat, said producers must plan their summer very well in the face of this decrease in production, adding that he hoped Spanish companies would prioritize exporting their production to the closest destinations and that there would be a significant decrease in exports to the third countries.3 Expectations...

The Yangshan Deepwater Container Terminal at the Port of Shanghai, where trade flows have slowed because of citywide COVID restrictionsA mixed bag of circumstances and time horizons are creating diverging narratives about whether shipping delays stemming from the shutdown of Shanghai and other Chinese cities are getting better or presage massive supply chain gridlock. There is no sign that Shanghai’s lockdown is easing anytime soon. Footage on social media shows steel fences being installed on public roads and inside residential compounds to keep people from traveling to other districts and moving in neighborhoods. On Monday, the Shanghai Health Commission reported...

What we have witnessed so far is just the beginning of the story. The global response to the COVID pandemic during 2020 and 2021 created the most epic supply chain crisis in modern times, and now “black swan events” such as the war in Ukraine and the bird flu pandemic are making that supply chain crisis even worse. Unfortunately, more global difficulties are coming. There will be more war, there will be more pestilences, there will be more natural disasters, and even the United Nations is admitting that we are heading into the worst global food crisis since World War...