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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

#431

Post by dtech »

cle wrote: post #415
dten wrote: post #158

I found out yesterday that the port of LA has a free real-time dashboard ( https://tower.portoptimizer.com/ ) so you can check the stats yourself. While it's interesting that next (week 19) shows a 35% drop YoY, the following week predicts a 25% increase from w19 and "only" 8.7% drop YoY.

Week 9->10 2025 had a 35% drop too. And Week 9->10 2024 had a 45% drop and a 26% drop Week 16->17 2024. Starting to wonder how significant this news really is?

That is Chinese New Year, it has always a very large drop. It's very impactful but expected and yearly.

My companies reporting needs to correct for it since the date shifts on western calendar and if would mess up all reporting otherwise, so yes, this is extremely significant.

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

#432

Post by ericmay »

Teever wrote: post #406
ericmay wrote: post #398

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's also just not the general lesson from history either. Plus you have to recall that in many cases war is about resource acquisition as much as anything else, and sometimes wars are popularized as ideological crusades when they are masquerading as resource disputes in order to motivate a populace. Something that has become apparent to me is that in our years of somewhat peaceful economic growth, we seem to have fo…

I'm not pitching this as a moral crusade, but as a practical one. Authoritarianism is a cancer that invariably spreads and disrupts the global system. It is simply in our best interest to starve cancer whenever we find it and excise it if possible. If the goal of buying Russian hydrocarbons was to increase the economic stability of Russia and to foster capitalistic market systems in the country to prevent the rise of…

Are you ready to sign up and go fight in Ukraine or elsewhere and die to stop authoritarianism as a matter of practicality?

It's not a very fair question to ask, I know, but I think we really need to make sure we are honest about what we're asking people to do.

Cutting economic ties in these specific cases isn't enough to actually stop the bloodshed and bring about stability.

There are practical limits to our willpower and resources and we can't just stamp out every dictatorship in the world, remember Iraq and Afghanistan? I fully support our actions in Ukraine, by the way, and in terms of picking fights that's probably one of our better ones to help stop authoritarianism.

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

#433

Post by bluGill »

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!

He didn't specify what factory.

I have a metal lathe in my shop, if I thought it was worth it I could turn it into a factory in 10 minutes - including the time to change my clothes. I could a factory to build simple toolboxes in about a month - not much space or equipment needed. Building a car assembly line - one month if you will accept a production rate of 1 every year. Want to turn out a new car every minute and it will take a lot longer.

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

#434

Post by achandlerwhite »

dmarlow wrote: post #316
pbronez wrote: post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the elephants in the room: Intellectual property theft. Yup. China has been systematically stealing the IP of anything made in their country since forever. Companies kept falling for it because the potential market looked so big. Now BYD makes cars as good as Tesla and it's all #ShockedPikachuFace

Doesn't Tesla have an open patent philosophy? I've heard Musk say that if someone builds a better electric car and it causes the end of Tesla, he's fine with that.

Are their shareholders fine with that?

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

#435

Post by jimt1234 »

dten wrote: post #158

I found out yesterday that the port of LA has a free real-time dashboard ( https://tower.portoptimizer.com/ ) so you can check the stats yourself. While it's interesting that next (week 19) shows a 35% drop YoY, the following week predicts a 25% increase from w19 and "only" 8.7% drop YoY.

This site is obviously a "hostile and political act" by the Port of LA.

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

#436

Post by bink »

kolanos wrote: post #409
MaxPock wrote: post #371

Earlier quoted context omitted.

GM used to sell more cars in China than in the US .Same with VW , Mercedes and BMW

While this is true, this changed around 2009. What happened? The Chinese government started heavily subsidizing domestic automakers [0]while continuing the joint venture requirements for foreign automakers, which started in 1979 [1]. These joint venture requirements have been a source of significant intellectual property theft [2]. All foreign automakers operating in China, not just U.S. ones, have either faced bankr…

Coincidentally around the same time that the US bailed out its own automakers. The US also heavily subsidizes it's own auto industry, see the billions loaned to Rivian to build their new plant.

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

#437

Post by vaidhy »

xienze wrote: post #321
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…

> Second, the US is ~15% of China's exports and a lot of those exports will continue even with tariffs. But I was told the ports were empty and the shelves would be bare. That implies almost all of that 15% being shut down, doesn’t it?

US is 15% of China, but China is 40% of US imports.. Maybe you are mixing up the countries?

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

#438

Post by LeChuck »

crote wrote: post #234
thfuran wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think two weeks is pretty much the low end of transit time for a container from China to US, so I wouldn't expect needing much modeling within that window.

Ships can be rerouted while in transit. I bet it is extremely unusual for a container ship, but we do live in interesting times.

It happens all the time but it’s more useful to think in terms of container flows getting rerouted. Container ships sail in fixed loops so have containers on board for multiple ports. It often happens that the order in which the ports are called (the rotation) is changed, or a particular port gets skipped all together. Reasons can be congestion, delays in previous ports, etc. etc. The line can choose to transship the cargo, so pick it up with a second ship to carry it to destination, have the customer pick it up in the new location (possibly with a rebate) or truck/rail it to the final destination themselves.

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

#439

Post by adamc »

jmyeet wrote: post #75
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 "empty shelves" discourse is alarmist and honestly kind of annoying. Almost all of the food on the shelves is locally produced or, in the very least, not produced in China. Some foods may disappear or become more expensive but there'll really be no disruption in food supply. This will however affect markets dominated by Chinese goods, particularly clothing. Even here the effects will be somewhat mitigated by exis…

I buy dish soap on a regular basis. Not sure where the soap is produced, but I would guess the bottles might be from China -- a lot of packaging is. Sure, there are some US companies that make bottles, but can they expand their capacity? Probably not quickly.

I think there will be a lot of unintuitive effects from things like packaging.

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

#440

Post by bluGill »

nonethewiser wrote: post #397
Kneedler wrote: post #306

I was going to purchase a shipping container for my property in the US a few days ago, but the company I was talking with has raised their prices 70% over the quote I got 2-3 weeks prior.

Wouldn't there be an excess of containers?

No because containers are in high demand overall. While the US is importing less, stuff to the EU is taking the long way around Africa and that means more containers are needed.
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