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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

#201

Post by davidw »

jonathanstrange wrote: post #187
davidw wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

A few relevant charts from the video in the blog post, with links to authoritative sources is plenty to understand that he's correct, without sitting through an entire 10 minutes of video.

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

#202

Post by antonvs »

AtlasBarfed wrote: post #109
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.

People seem to think, including very disturbingly our secretary of the Treasury, the companies maintain huge warehouses of back stock. That hasn't been the case since the mid-90s when the PC revolution started pushing out supply chain management software. If I recall correctly, Walmart was the innovator in this space in one of their key ways to gain economic advantage over other retailers was low back stock demand tr…

> That hasn't been the case since the mid-90s when the PC revolution started pushing out supply chain management software.

I worked on PC software for optimizing warehouse inventory in the mid-1980s. The system was designed by an applied mathematician and used by large national companies. Customers made substantial savings - double digit percentages of inventory cost.

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

#203

Post by jghn »

FollowingTheDao wrote: post #167
jghn wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I both agree and have been worried that this is overly reductive. As far as I can tell, literally nothing that I buy regularly is directly sourced from China. Or anywhere other than the US & neighboring countries. The vast majority of my groceries are locally sourced. And the vast majority of the rest come from expected regions, for instance San Marzano tomatoes from Italy. I do not regularly buy clothes, children's…

If people can’t buy Chinese tomatoes, what kind of tomatoes do you think they’re going to buy m? the same ones that you do! That means the prices of your tomatoes are going to go up! No one is going to be immune from these pricing increases from the tariffs.

You're largely making the point I was raising.

For your specific example though, I'm not so sure. As a counterexample, I buy my eggs direct from a local farm, not in a store. Neither the ease of availability nor the price of the eggs I buy have changed one iota over the last several months. And yet I see local friends posting pictures of empty egg shelves here and there on Facebook. My takeaway has been that the average person has no idea they can buy goods outside of a grocery store.

So back to your point, I buy most of my tomatoes direct from local farmers. Unless people start buying from *them* it is fine.

HOWEVER, if those local farmers can't get parts for their farm equipment or something like that, I'm just as screwed.

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

#204

Post by everforward »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #172
potato3732842 wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Paper is one of the things one should be least worried about. We source chips from Canada because it's marginally cheaper to source it from there. It's not like the US doesn't have a ton of sources of wood pulp. Canada just has bigger cheaper sources (comparing like for like quality). We also burn a lot of "less than ideal for paper" chips for energy rather than feed them into a paper mill, also for marginal cost per…

Please provide citations for these assertions.

It's probably true, because I think wood pulp for paper doesn't have rigid requirements on type of wood, or size, or strength. There are also alternative materials if we had to, like hemp. There's probably a dozen others; I wouldn't be surprised if grass trimmings could be turned into toilet paper.

The threat to lumber for building is a much greater concern because there aren't ready and price-comparable alternatives.

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

#205

Post by School-Cotton »

rayiner wrote: post #120
reaperducer wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This could get really ugly when the shelves start going empty. Retailers Fear Toy Shortages at Christmas as Tariffs Freeze Supply Chain: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/29/business/trump-tariffs-ch... In a Toy Association survey of 410 toy manufacturers with annual sales of less than $100 million, more than 60 percent said they had canceled orders, and around 50 percent said they would go out of business within weeks…

[flagged]

This is disingenuous even by your usual standards. “cheap Chinese crap for Christmas” was just one example of things that tariffs will make it harder to get, by no means the only one.

It’s not the 90s anymore. Lots of Chinese goods are neither cheap nor crap, nor producible elsewhere.

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

#206

Post by tim333 »

mstaoru wrote: post #107

I'm moving internationally (from China to EU) and the quote is 2.5-3x higher than 3 months ago. Sea freight seems to be inspected at a much higher rate, and they don't recommend it, and air freight is more expensive because of much lower volume overall. Not a good time to ship your stuff. And that's when you think "I'm far away from the US and the madness does not concern me"...

The 2.5-3x higher is probably temporary while people rush to ship stuff before the tariffs. It may get much cheaper shortly.

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

#207

Post by dv_dt »

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.

Retail shelves are a easy personally viewable measure, but a ramping logistics disruption & price increase on all sorts of processes we rely on daily may also be going on in parallel with more empty shelves. Parts for factories, cars, appliances, power stations etc...

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

#208

Post by spacemadness »

mstaoru wrote: post #107

I'm moving internationally (from China to EU) and the quote is 2.5-3x higher than 3 months ago. Sea freight seems to be inspected at a much higher rate, and they don't recommend it, and air freight is more expensive because of much lower volume overall. Not a good time to ship your stuff. And that's when you think "I'm far away from the US and the madness does not concern me"...

If the assumed be negative indicators for the US economy come to light, and it’s made clear that the US has committed economic suicide, now with data, there aren’t going to be many safe harbors in the world for the average person.

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

#209

Post by aziaziazi »

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.

The smart ones will head to the hardware store instead of rushing to the paper: bidet-washing-tube will makes you free of toilet paper for life.

Cost: 10-30$

Installation: 20min with basic tools on your existing toilet.

Usage: tons and tons of online tutorials because 1/3 of the world already use that daily. But you can also figure it out yourself easely, it’s way easier than managing node_modules on a shared project.

Even cheaper alternative: a simple plastic bottle half-full and half bend. Many cheap labours in my city (Paris, fr) use one at work (cook, night cleaners, construction…). While the bourgeoisie fight for pooping clean during a world crisis, their Pakistani labor do they shit as usual. We should be inspired.

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

#210

Post by selectodude »

School-Cotton wrote: post #196
selectodude wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've seen all three begin short-shipping us, especially on cheaper brands.

Who is “us”? Do you work for a grocery store?

I won't disclose my employer for obvious reasons but I work in supply chain.
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