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

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

#271

Post by parineum »

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…

> 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?

I guess you forgot about the corpse of Biden. Harris belongs in that "challengers" category except she had less support than DeSantis and Haley (from both Democrats and Republicans!). Harris has never received a vote in a presidential primary.

The Democratic party enabled Trump to win by not forcing a clearly incapable Biden out of the race earlier, allowing them to run an actual primary and then choosing a terrible candidate because they backed themselves into a corner with identity politics. Remember, the Democratic party was totally fine with Biden until he was forced in front of the American people and they got as good of a look at him as the party had.

That's how our system produces these horrible candidates. Each party acts in their own self-interest because they have a stranglehold over the electoral process.

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

#272

Post by kergonath »

dgfitz wrote: post #184
jmyeet wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That 15% is not going to go away overnight. Some of won’t be sent to the US will be sold to the rest of the world instead. Possibly at a discount, so it is not ideal from the point of view of the Chinese government, but they are still well equipped to weather a temporary dip of 7% in their foreign trade.

Nobody said that it would be painless for China. Just that

1- it will be less painful for China than the US

2- China is more resilient against this particular kind of stress because they have a command economy and have more control on the population.

If the US blinks and caves, it does not matter whether China got a scratch, it’s still going to win the war. And Covid taught us that something would need to be quite dire for China to blink.

Also, it got lost in the noise, but right now there is still a blanket 10% tariff on anything that enters the US, and presumably these 10% can turn to much more when Trumps feels like it. It’s not the US against China, it’s the US against the world.

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

#273

Post by ryandrake »

pixl97 wrote: post #64
taylodl wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

In addition tik-tok/insta are having post after post warning people that the shelves are going to be empty which tends to feedback into itself. If you were going to buy 1 of X normally if you think X may be out for sometime you may end up buying 2-4 of X which will run the shelves out very quickly when 10-15% of purchasers do that unexpectedly. Other people see the shelves emptying and buy more too. Going to be messy…

> If you were going to buy 1 of X normally if you think X may be out for sometime you may end up buying 2-4 of X which will run the shelves out very quickly when 10-15% of purchasers do that unexpectedly.

There are enough people who buy 0 of X normally, but if they think there might be stockouts, will visit every store in their area and buy 100 of X so they can scalp them and make a buck off their neighbors.

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

#275

Post by duxup »

gosub100 wrote: post #249
duxup wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder if he wants to work in a shoe factory?

How is that any different than hourly wage slave jobs now? It's better than being homeless or spending imaginary bucks printed against a debt that will never be paid off

>How is that any different than hourly wage slave jobs now?

It doesn't sound like you like those jobs, shoe factory might not be better, so yay?

Better than being homeless isn't much of a selling point...

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

#277

Post by lesuorac »

ajmurmann wrote: post #83
bjourne wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He's not wrong. It is technically possible. However, transforming the US into a command economy may not be the best thing to do.

We can build a factory in a month, including permitting, acquiring the land, planning the building and constucting it, as well as procuring or building the machinery and setting it up in the factory, programming it and hiring and training the workforce during high employment? That's very impressive!

Perhaps not a month but the US really can build things fast if that's actually prioritized.

https://www.globalhighways.com/wh10/feature/building-replace...

tbh, as far as I'm concerned the hollowing out of the USG is why we can't do things fast. How many times has your boss had the entire team submit a proposal on how long it would take each member of the team to complete a JIRA ticket and then use that bidding as to who to assign the ticket? Like if you could build bridges and stuff in-house then you really speed things up.

Given that something like a factory is probably going to require eminent domain to get a large contiguous tract (or built in the middle of nowhere so no counter-lawsuit) it seems fine for the government to build the shell of a building and then sell it off to be customized.

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

#278

Post by kbelder »

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.

I'm undecided. I hate these llm summaries, and nearly always downvote them. They're rarely helpful, often unpleasant, and very very lazy.

But... I may hate links to videos even more. A summary of a video isn't lazy, it's nearly a requirement. So, an upvote for now, at least.

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

#279

Post by parineum »

consp wrote: post #246
parineum wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I haven't seen anyone saying that there's going to be no food. All reporting I've seen is that Walmart/Target shelves are going to be empty because of the glut of consumer goods they sell that are manufacture in China, ie, clothing, toys, electronics, etc.

Isn't most clothing made all over asia? As in: some brands will be affected and others will not?

That's certainly true.

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

#280

Post by HFguy »

robomartin wrote: post #269
jillesvangurp wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Empty shelves are just one of the symptoms. The real pain will come from companies having to deal with increased taxes (that's what tariffs are) for Chinese components, decreased exports (counter tariffs, anti US sentiments), etc. and then their follow up to that would be using tools like layoffs, price increases, etc. Some of those companies might have to close doors and go bankrupt. If that happens a lot you get th…

I am very much on the fence on this one. I can tell you, without a shadow of a doubt, based on having been in manufacturing across various industries for over thirty years, that the US and Europe have been on a path to loose nearly all manufacturing capacity within ten years, maybe twenty at best. How do we compare the pain (and yes, some destruction) that we have to endure today against the devastation that is clear…

I think you do a good job of high-lighting the underlying problem.

Which is not being discussed enough.

And that the current situation can go on a long time but not forever.

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