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Source: Unleashed.news If China secures the CopiaPort-E project, it would turbocharge Beijing’s trade in South America—not only enabling CHINAMAX megaships, but allowing all shipping to completely bypass U.S.-controlled chokepoints and dominate hemispheric commerce virtually overnight. A geopolitical storm is brewing on the western edge of South America—and the United States cannot afford to look away. At the heart of it all lies a deep-water mega-port project in Chile’s Atacama Desert: CopiaPort-E, a port so naturally engineered by geography itself that it could become either America’s greatest commercial and strategic opportunity, or China’s most dangerous economic beachhead south of our border....

As China’s Belt and Road initiative tightens worldwide, the U.S. has a rare opportunity to stymie its inroads into Latin America. “We often say that to get rich, we must first build roads; but in coastal areas, to get rich, we must also first build ports.” – Xi Jinping, General Secretary of the Communist Party of the China Central Committee The Chinese Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) to develop CopiaPort-E, Chile’s deep-water port on the Pacific, raises national security questions given that Todd Callender, Esq., the CEO of the insurance conglomerate Cotswold Group in Barbados, would prefer to sell to the...

California now has more electric vehicle (EV) charging stations than gas nozzles, but consumer demand is struggling to meet Gov. Gavin Newsom’s target of ending gas-powered vehicle sales by 2035, and federal support is in doubt. The Los Angeles Times reported Wednesday: Electric vehicle charging ports now outnumber gas nozzles across the Golden State, a sign of the increasing number of zero-emission vehicles on the road. But the milestone arrives as the federal government has moved to deprioritize the shift away from gasoline-powered cars. … The number of accessible chargers across California has nearly doubled since 2022. Just since August,...

The British paper The Telegraph claims to have has access to a draft of the ‘pre-decisional contract’, sent by the US to Volodymyr Zelensky, dealing with a demand for a $500bn ‘payback’ from Ukraine for the aid already delivered. The document, marked ‘Privileged & Confidential’ and dated Feb 7 2025, has caused ‘consternation and panic’ in Kiev, according to the Telegraph report. The writer Ambrose Evans Pritchard is ‘shocked’ by the draconian terms, calls it ‘economic colonization of Ukraine’, a ‘burden of reparations that cannot possibly be achieved’. (“It states that the US and Ukraine should form a joint investment...

KOLWEZI, Democratic Republic of Congo — Little about Kolwezi, a small city in southern Democratic Republic of Congo, hints at its global importance. Nondescript and ringed by slag heaps, pits and quarry lakes, the city is home to some of the largest copper and cobalt mines in the world. Now, Kolwezi is at the center of U.S.-Chinese competition over critical minerals. Earlier this year, mining firms began shipping ore along a U.S.-backed railway that terminates in Angola's Atlantic port of Lobito. A massive infrastructure project is focused on this rail line -- which is viewed as a bid to counter...

LOS ANGELES – Federal law enforcement has arrested eight defendants charged in an indictment alleging a conspiracy among logistic companies’ executives, warehouse owners and truck drivers to smuggle hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of counterfeit and other illegal goods from China into the United States via the Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, the Justice Department announced today. The 15-count indictment, returned last month and unsealed Friday, charges nine defendants with conspiracy, smuggling and breaking customs seals. The defendants allegedly took containers flagged for off-site secondary inspection, unloaded the contraband, then stuffed the targeted containers with filler cargo...

The Biden White House made a stunning admission that Chinese hackers have the ability to cripple the American power grid and ports, and it is reportedly not just run-of-the-mill intrusions but increasingly sophisticated actors with unparalleled skills. Jake Sullivan, national security adviser, had known about the Chinese hackers' ability to knock out critical infrastructure for more than a year, sources told The Wall Street Journal. In the fall of 2023 he had warned telecommunications and technology executives in a secret White House meeting, seeking Big Tech's help in protecting American lives and infrastructure from hacks. Since then there have been...

President-elect Donald Trump’s victory bodes well for US-Morocco relations. As King Mohamed VI recalled in his statement congratulating Trump on his election win, during his first term, Trump recognized Rabat’s full sovereignty over the disputed territory of Western Sahara. Trump made this recognition with a presidential proclamation on December 10, 2020, in exchange for Morocco reestablishing diplomatic relations with Israel. In his statement, Mohammed VI went on to say that “the Moroccan people will forever be grateful” for this recognition, calling Washington “our longstanding friend and ally.” While Morocco hopes to pick up where it left off in negotiations with...

Some union leaders are self-destructive idiots. America's ports have fallen behind. Not a single one ranks in the top 50 worldwide. A big reason is that dock unions stop innovation. Advertisement This fall, the International Longshoremen's Association shut down East and Gulf coast ports, striking for a raise and a ban on automation. They got the raise. Now union president Harold Daggett says longshoremen will strike again in January if they don't get that ban on automation. His statement in my new video makes it clear that he knows how badly his strike would damage other Americans. "Guys who sell...

'I'm a Democrat but they have [expletive] us over for the last 40 years and for once we're standing up as a union saying what the [expletive] have you done for us?' O'Brien said in scathing remarks. 'I'm getting attacked from the left you know and since I've been in office over two and a half years we've given the Democratic machine $15.7 million. 'We've given Republicans about $340,000 truth be told, so it's like you know people say the Democratic party is the party of working people, but they're actually bought and paid for by big tech,' O'Brien explained.

As East and Gulf Coast ports begin to operate as normal again, one of the country’s top entrepreneurs is weighing in on “the trouble” with union workers’ demands. “The trouble with East Coast ports is they’re very old, they’re very inefficient,” O’Leary Ventures Chairman and “Shark Tank” star Kevin O’Leary said on “Varney & Co.” Friday. “And when you start to compare them against other international ports like Singapore and the other Asian ports,” he continued, “we’re just not holding much up against them. And that’s very bad for productivity.” US dockworkers returned to work Friday morning after reaching a...

Nearly 50,000 dockworkers launched a strike this week at ports from Maine to Texas — but, in a bizarre quirk that has resulted from massive concessions to the union over the decades, the affected ports only employ 25,000. There’s a massive gulf in the numbers between those who show up for work and total membership in the powerful International Longshoremen’s Association, which won a deal late Thursday for a 62% wage increase over the next six years. That’s because half of the dockworkers at the East and Gulf coast ports are allowed to sit at home collecting “container royalties” negotiated...

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis announced Thursday that he has ordered the Florida National Guard and Florida State Guard deploy to ports affected by the Longshoremen strike to maintain order and potentially resume operations. During a press conference in Manatee County, DeSantis discussed three executive actions he’s taken amid the ongoing hurricane recovery efforts in Florida. The first action he announced was the lifting of time restrictions on rentals, so residents who need a place to stay while they repair their homes are not limited. The governor said he also authorized supervisors of elections in the hardest-hit counties to make appropriate...

On Wednesday’s broadcast of CNBC’s “Squawk Box,” Harris-Walz Surrogate Colorado Gov. Jared Polis (D) argued that there will be fewer strikes if 2024 Democratic presidential candidate Vice President Kamala Harris is elected and that the head of the dockworkers union is “a Trump guy” who might want to cripple the economy for political purposes.

Contract proposals from the International Longshoremen's Association could "lock America back in the Stone Age for another six years," the CEO of the National Association of Wholesaler-Distributors warned on Tuesday. Appearing on FOX Business, NAW head Eric Hoplin told Maria Bartiromo the union's push to ban automation at gates and for cranes moving containers and unloading cargo is "unrealistic."... "Look around the globe. ...Rotterdam started moving to automation 30 years ago. We're already three decades behind," he said.... "The fact that the president is not intervening is a mistake," Hoplin continued. "So I've joined 200 other trade association CEOs representing...

U.S. President Joe Biden said on Sunday he did not intend to intervene to prevent a port strike on the East Coast and Gulf of Mexico if dock workers failed to secure a new contract by an Oct. 1 deadline. “It’s collective bargaining. I don’t believe in Taft-Hartley,” he told reporters. Presidents can intervene in labor disputes that threaten national security or safety by imposing an 80-day cooling-off period under the federal Taft-Hartley Act.

Key Points Approximately 50,000 ILA union longshoremen were walking off the job at East Coast and Gulf Coast ports from New England to Texas starting at 12:01 a.m. ET on October 1 after failing to reach an agreement with ports ownership on a new contract, the union’s first strike since 1977. Between 43%-49% of all U.S. imports and billions of dollars in trade monthly move through the U.S East Coast and Gulf ports. The International Longshoreman’s Association, the largest maritime union in North America, rejected an offer from the port management group USMX on Monday that included a wage hike...

As thousands of dockworkers are preparing to strike should a deal not be reached by the end of Monday, one business leader is questioning the union’s demand for a total ban on automation. International Longshoremen's Association (ILA) on Sunday said its 85,000 members, along with "tens of thousands of dockworkers and maritime workers around the world," will hit the picket lines Tuesday "and strike at all Atlantic and Gulf Coast ports from Maine to Texas." The union is demanding higher wages and a total ban on the automation at ports regarding cranes, gates and moving containers in the loading and...

A looming strike by dockworkers at ports from Massachusetts to Texas could snarl supply chains and raise prices on a wide array of consumer goods—just as the holiday shipping season approaches. Members of the International Longshoremen's Association, a union representing 85,000 dockworkers, plan to strike Tuesday if they can't reach agreement on a new contract with the United States Maritime Alliance, which represents large shipping lines. A walkout would be the first East Coast dock strike in the U.S. since 1977. A strike would shut down container facilities at 14 ports stretching from Boston to Houston. Those ports handled more...

Even before the expected longshoremen's strike begins, we have learned a great deal about the shortsightedness and incompetence of the modern Democrat party. First, some background is in order: The United States have several dozen cargo-handling seaports, divided between the West Coast, the East Coast, the Gulf Coast, and the Great Lakes. While the Great Lakes still have a good deal of bulk shipping, the slick supply chain facilitated by modern containerization (the switch from moving cargo a pallet or crate at a time to moving it all in 20’ and 40’ intermodal containers, stacked by the thousands on containerships)...