Free Republic

A huge Pacific storm is poised to unleash conditions known as an “atmospheric river”, with torrential rains and strong winds putting about 10 million people at risk of flash floods in parts of northern California this weekend. The incoming tempest has raised fears of mudslides, especially in areas charred during record-setting wildfires this summer. Some parts of the Pacific north-west, including coastal Oregon, are also expected to see heavy rains and winds, the Bloomberg news website reported. Much of the Bay Area around San Francisco could see 3-3.5in of rain, with up to 8in expected at higher elevations in the...

Cargo air shipping companies warned the White House that its proposed vaccine mandate will wreak havoc on the supply chain by putting even more strain on staffing across the industry, according to a letter sent by a cargo association to the Biden administration. “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, the head of the Cargo Airline Association, wrote to the Office of Management and Budget, which is currently reviewing an emergency temporary standard that was submitted...

The operators of Los Angeles-area ports say President Joe Biden’s round-the-clock cargo mandate is not realistic, according to a report . The president recently called for the shipping hubs to go into overdrive to ease the supply-chain crunch that has more than a hundred loaded freighters anchored off the coast. But 24/7 operations would cost the ports huge money in overtime, and the owners aren't eager to eat the expense. “I don’t see how the terminals are going to be reimbursed. It’s big money,” Ed DeNike, president of SSA Containers, whose parent company Carrix operates three terminals in Long Beach,...

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.

From Christmas toys to clothing and auto parts, shortages of imported products are forcing factories to idle, store shelves to sit empty and consumers to panic. What else is in short supply? The truth about what's causing this economic crisis. resident Joe Biden, who brags about running "the most pro-union administration in history," won't admit that longshoremen's unions are holding the nation hostage, refusing to allow the use of automated equipment to unload container ships and get the goods onto trucks faster. The U.S. is the world's largest importer, but its major ports at Los Angeles and Long Beach, California,...

“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...

The Website provides information about current geographical positions of ships as well as other related information, whenever available, such as ships’ details, their destination, estimated time of arrival, photographs, port traffic statistics, weather conditions, points of interest, etc.

I'm looking for a simple explanation of what is causing this backlog of container ships off the California coast. I've been seeing a wide ranges of reasons including: A) environmental California trucking regulations from the California Air Resources Board which mandates all trucks must be 2011 or newer. B) CA law AB-5 which bans bans owner operators which was aimed at Uber and Lyft drivers but encompassed and banned almost all freelance jobs. C) Biden/Newsom vaccine mandates. Is it a combination of all of this and or some other factors? Democrats talk about a lack of truck drivers but why...

The global supply chain is in complete tatters. Tens of thousands of items and services are in short supply or can’t be found at all. This is leading to higher prices, a/k/a cost-push inflation, and a general decrease in the purchasing power of all fiat currencies, be it the US Dollar, the Japanese Yen or the Euro. The choice of items to include here could fill volumes. We picked things that often appear very obscure, such as ketchup or pallets and yet are staples of modern life. Pallets Wooden shipping pallets are required to transport almost anything imaginable including: paper...

State Health and Human Services computer system failure A widely-criticized rollout of a new computer network system for the Rhode Island Executive Office of Health and Human Services dubbed the "Unified Health Infrastructure Project" (UHIP) in September 2016 saw scores of people without access to gov programs food stamps, child care due to glitches in software by Deloitte. This computer crash created a backlog of more than 20,000 cases. The Raimondo Administration received several letters from the federal government in 2016 warning UHIP not ready to be launched. On orders of Raimondo, the UHIP launch occurred as planned despite federal...

The FAA is headed by a pilot, NASA is headed by an astronaut, the US Marine Corps is headed by a Marine but for the fourth time in a row, and during the worst shipping crisis of the century, the US Department of Transportation, has appointed someone to the US Maritime Administration (MARAD) who is not a captain and has no commercial shipping experience. Yesterday afternoon, President Biden announced his intention to nominate Rear Admiral Ann Phillips, US Navy (Retired), as the next US Maritime Administrator, a position that has been vacant since Rear Admiral Mark Buzby stepped down following...

Hundreds of requests for details on the specifics of the container shipping backlog. So, I spent 3 days calling sources, digging for details and gathering information on the substantive issue at hand. The epicenter of the problem is not what is being outlined by financial media, corporate media and politicians who have a specific interest in distracting from the issues at hand. This has nothing to do with COVID-19. The issues being discussed today relate to events that happened a long time ago. As a matter of fact, it was so predictable that Amazon, Walmart, UPS, FedEx, Samsung, The Home...

As if relentless, fiscally-stimulated global demand for (made in China) products, coupled with soaring input prices, Covid-crippled indutries, production-throttling energy crises and containership parking lots off major ports wasn’t enough to cripple global supply chains, we can throw in one more factor that will make “just in time” deliveries a thing of the pre-Biden past and will ensure that nobody gets their presents this Christmas. The weather. A tropical storm that’s lashing southern China is causing a ship backlog from Shenzhen to Singapore, Bloomberg reports as it warn of even emptier store shelves come Christmas. Shipping data compiled by Bloomberg...

President Joe Biden is expected to announce the Port of Los Angeles will begin operating 24 hours a day, a push from the White House to clear supply chain disruptions that are threatening holiday shopping season plans and slowing the nation’s economic recovery from the pandemic, according to media reports. The Los Angeles Times is reporting Biden is scheduled to make the announcement Wednesday. A similar plan is in effect at the Port of Long Beach. The two ports are responsible for nearly half of all imports into the United States. Under the proposed plan, the Port of Los Angeles...

President Joe Biden and his Departments of Commerce, Labor, and Transportation have failed to solve a supply chain crisis causing the backup of supplies at U.S. ports and cross country transportation as the left-wing media lays the blame solely on the coronavirus. A CNN report said consumers can’t expect to shop like they did in the “Before Times” and highlighted manufacturers warning of limited food supplies:If you hoped grocery stores this fall and winter would look like they did in the Before Times, with limitless options stretching out before you in the snack, drink, candy and frozen foods aisles, get...

The era of abundance was only a short-lived artifact of the initial boost phase of globalization and financialization.Global corporations didn’t go to all the effort to establish quasi-monopolies and cartels for our convenience–they did it to ensure reliably large profits from control and scarcity. Not all scarcities are artificial, i.e. the result of cartels limiting supply to keep prices high; many scarcities are real, and many of these scarcities can be traced back to the stripping out of redundancy / multiple suppliers of industrial essentials to streamline efficiency and eliminate competition. Recall that competition and abundance are anathema to profits....

Yet another sign of stress for energy supplies and global supply chains: Spot rates for large dry cargo ships just topped $80,000 per day for the first time since 2009, and freight derivatives for the fourth quarter — a period when rates for these vessels normally pull back — just spiked. Not long ago, it was a different story. On Sept. 20, headlines were dominated by Chinese property developer Evergrande and its impending collapse; fallout to construction and steel demand would assumedly hit future Chinese buying of commodities carried on dry cargo vessels. Dry bulk stocks plunged. While spot rates...

Since the outset of the COVID-19 pandemic, the maritime, road and aviation industries have called loudly and clearly on governments to ensure the free movement of transport workers and to end travel bans and other restrictions that have had an enormously detrimental impact on their wellbeing and safety. Transport workers keep the world running and are vital for the free movement of products, including vaccines and PPE, but have been continually failed by governments and taken for granted by their officials. Our calls have been consistent and clear: freedom of movement for transport workers, for governments to use protocols that...

Please Explain. Exactly Why Do We Have a Shipping Crisis?

This year, spot ocean container rates have reached record highs and could be at a crucial inflection point this week. News of 40-foot container rates on the world’s most important shipping lane, that is, China and the U.S., plunged amid a power crunch shutting down factories across multiple Chinese provinces leading speculators to sell their shipping spots, according to Chinese media outlet Caixin Global. Caixin spoke with an executive at a Shanghai freight company Thursday who said 40-foot container rates from China to the U.S. West Coast sank this week, plummeting from $15,000 to just $8,000. For the same container,...