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Port of Los Angeles says shipping volume will plummet 35% next week

cnbc.com

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Re: Port of Los Angeles says shipping volume will plummet 35% next week

#181

Post by davidw »

martythemaniak wrote: post #170
trebligdivad wrote: post #21

The youtuber 'What's going on with shipping?' has a good description in; it includes pointers to loads of sites with the actual data. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2GgcIuQ4X5k

[flagged]

This is pretty useful, actually, downvoters. My friends and I were discussing this video yesterday and I was pretty irritated that it took 10 whole minutes to debunk the social media hyperbole. That could have easily been a blog post that I could have skimmed in 1 minute.

It's a textbook case of why I tend to dislike video as a format.

Re: Port of Los Angeles says shipping volume will plummet 35% next week

#182

Post by yks »

bilbo0s wrote: post #103
taylodl wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The United States has never had such incompetence in governance. Americans aren't accustomed to this degree of ineptness.

It's surprising that we would actually vote for this of our own free will. That's gotta be something historians will puzzle over for the next two hundred years. It's mind blowing that we did that. Stepping a level lower even, how, on Earth, could our system possibly have produced Harris, Vance and Trump as the options? Then you step a level lower than that, and even the challengers were like, DeSantis and Haley? It w…

> Harris, Vance and Trump

Oh ffs, Harris in charge would've been just fine. If we're talking about economy/stock market only, even Vance as president would've been fine as well, although he'd destroy American democracy way more efficiently than Trump.

Re: Port of Los Angeles says shipping volume will plummet 35% next week

#183

Post by everforward »

taylodl wrote: post #40
thehoff wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FTA: Maybe not empty but less choice and alternatives not necessarily what you're looking for. “I don’t see a complete emptiness on store shelves or online when we’re buying. But if you’re out looking for a blue shirt, you might find 11 purple ones and one blue in a size that’s not yours. So we’ll start seeing less choice on those shelves simply because we’re not getting the variety of goods coming in here based on t…

Markets don't work that way. Supply is tuned to demand. When the supply is artificially constrained while the demand remains constant, it further strains already limited supplies, leading to empty shelves and rising prices. This is a fundamental principle of market economics. It's important to understand how these dynamics operate to grasp the broader implications of reduced imports from China.

I think the above quote is accounting for both constrained supply and reduced demand from rising prices. Vendors consolidate their product lines to remove redundant (ish) offerings due to reduced demand and the new difficulties in managing supply chains. I.e. a shirt may only come in 3 colors instead of 10, and it may be harder to get the popular color because vendors are less likely to keep a large stock in warehouses.

It doesn't violate market dynamics that I can see, though I'm far from an expert.

Re: Port of Los Angeles says shipping volume will plummet 35% next week

#184

Post by dgfitz »

jmyeet wrote: post #148
SoftTalker wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everyone here is worried about it from the American side, but China has motivation to settle this too, so they can continue to sell their enshitified plastic crap. It's not like most other wealthy countries want it, at least not any more than they are already buying.

China is holding pretty much all the cards here. First, it has a command economy. It's much more equipped to handle this in keeping factories afloat and people employed and housed. Second, the US is ~15% of China's exports and a lot of those exports will continue even with tariffs. Some by diversified supply chains (eg "laundering" Chinese made goods through Vietnam) or the Chinese goods are so low cost that the tari…

My only two thoughts there are, China needs to fill that 15% gap, and I don’t know where they’ll do it. China also doesn’t want to sell too many treasuries least it upset their own financial stability in terms of purchasing power for their own citizens.

The economic outlook in China isn’t great right now. The US and China are playing a game a chicken, not sure who blinks first.

Re: Port of Los Angeles says shipping volume will plummet 35% next week

#185

Post by rc5150 »

XorNot wrote: post #44
thehoff wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FTA: Maybe not empty but less choice and alternatives not necessarily what you're looking for. “I don’t see a complete emptiness on store shelves or online when we’re buying. But if you’re out looking for a blue shirt, you might find 11 purple ones and one blue in a size that’s not yours. So we’ll start seeing less choice on those shelves simply because we’re not getting the variety of goods coming in here based on t…

It takes exactly 1 "bare shelves" post on social media to kick off panic buying which cascades. In fact it doesn't take much of a change in regular buying habits to cause that it it's all aligned in the same direction. i.e. a chunk of the toilet paper "shortage" can just be every customer suddenly buying one more pack that day "just to be on the safe side". Your local supermarket isn't expecting that, so the shelves…

It's that one person on the highway driving just a little too fast and a little too close to the person in front of them, then they tap on their brakes and it starts the chain reaction of 3 hours of bumper to bumper rush hour traffic.

Re: Port of Los Angeles says shipping volume will plummet 35% next week

#186

Post by skybrian »

taylodl wrote: post #40
thehoff wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FTA: Maybe not empty but less choice and alternatives not necessarily what you're looking for. “I don’t see a complete emptiness on store shelves or online when we’re buying. But if you’re out looking for a blue shirt, you might find 11 purple ones and one blue in a size that’s not yours. So we’ll start seeing less choice on those shelves simply because we’re not getting the variety of goods coming in here based on t…

Markets don't work that way. Supply is tuned to demand. When the supply is artificially constrained while the demand remains constant, it further strains already limited supplies, leading to empty shelves and rising prices. This is a fundamental principle of market economics. It's important to understand how these dynamics operate to grasp the broader implications of reduced imports from China.

One possible complication is that there’s quite a lot of waste that’s tolerated in pursuit of fashion and variety. (For example, Ross Dress For Less specializes in liquidating excess inventory.)

So I wonder how that plays out? My guess is that retailers take fewer risks when ordering, sticking with products that they know they can sell, even if prices are higher.

But they will still guess wrong sometimes.

Re: Port of Los Angeles says shipping volume will plummet 35% next week

#187

Post by jonathanstrange »

davidw wrote: post #181
martythemaniak wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

This is pretty useful, actually, downvoters. My friends and I were discussing this video yesterday and I was pretty irritated that it took 10 whole minutes to debunk the social media hyperbole. That could have easily been a blog post that I could have skimmed in 1 minute. It's a textbook case of why I tend to dislike video as a format.

The problem is that no layman can know whether the summary is correct without watching the video, so it takes 11 minutes instead of 10 to assess the information with the summary.

Re: Port of Los Angeles says shipping volume will plummet 35% next week

#188

Post by School-Cotton »

davidw wrote: post #181
martythemaniak wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

This is pretty useful, actually, downvoters. My friends and I were discussing this video yesterday and I was pretty irritated that it took 10 whole minutes to debunk the social media hyperbole. That could have easily been a blog post that I could have skimmed in 1 minute. It's a textbook case of why I tend to dislike video as a format.

You’re right, but if I want an LLM to summarize a video I can do it myself. I come to HN to talk to humans; talking to AIs makes me depressed. That’s why I downvote immediately every time anyone posts LLM content here.

Re: Port of Los Angeles says shipping volume will plummet 35% next week

#189

Post by danans »

vonneumannstan wrote: post #36
taylodl wrote: post #7

This could get really ugly when the shelves start going empty. This may make the toilet paper incident seem quaint in comparison.

Is there a sense of what products are actually at risk of not being in stock?

Anything low cost that requires a significant amount of manual labor to assemble. So clothes, toys, accessories, etc.

Re: Port of Los Angeles says shipping volume will plummet 35% next week

#190

Post by cameldrv »

thehoff wrote: post #10
taylodl wrote: post #7

This could get really ugly when the shelves start going empty. This may make the toilet paper incident seem quaint in comparison.

FTA: Maybe not empty but less choice and alternatives not necessarily what you're looking for. “I don’t see a complete emptiness on store shelves or online when we’re buying. But if you’re out looking for a blue shirt, you might find 11 purple ones and one blue in a size that’s not yours. So we’ll start seeing less choice on those shelves simply because we’re not getting the variety of goods coming in here based on t…

Honestly I doubt that shelves will be empty. Retailers are ordering less stuff from China because they’re predicting that demand will go down when the price is higher. If retailers were marking stuff up roughly 100% and take the same markup (in absolute terms), everything from China will go up about 70%, and people will simply not be able to afford to buy as much stuff.
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