Capitol Hill Blue Forums Political Issues Finance, the economy & Economics The other side of shipping

We all know, or have heard, that there aren’t enough trucks to deliver the goods awaiting shipment to their destination.

And we’ve all heard that there aren’t enough drivers for the trucks in the first place.

And we all know that ships are stacked up (if you can stack ships) to where there isn’t enough room to unload them. No workers to unload them either. So…they’re sitting in the ports (if ships can sit.)

But I’m not hearing much about how we’ve been moving manufacturing offshore for lots of years now. I’m not hearing anything about how much of that shipping backlog is due to products being manufactured overseas.

How much damage would an old-fashioned blockade do to us? There are almost no shoes manufactured in the US any more; the same is true for clothing. Phones and technology, ditto.

Is this being pointed out anywhere, or am I just not paying attention?

NPR discussed this very issue this morning. Manufacturing is moving operations closer to home (Mexico) from China.

I know a certain retail company that has leased three cargo ships exclusively for themselves, along with containers, and have systems in place to have the ships quckly offloaded.

I slept through the news this morning. I’ll listen to it later.

Thanks.

Governor DeSantis has offered up Florida's ports to help get merchandise on the shelves!

And they say altruism is dead...

Rick - can’t find it on Morning Edition - could it have been another program? I’ll look again but so far no good.

Gee, maybe some shipping companies need to offer drivers more money to come to Long Beach? What a strange concept! Offering more money to workers. That can't be a thing.

The other thing we need is more freight trains, to move those containers. Joe Biden should get on that. He's a train guy.

Everything is predicated on something else. You’d have the trains, if we’d stop hauling coal back east. We could stop hauling coal back east if we had some alternative form of energy, and the ability to manufacture somewhere in the remote vicinity where stuff needed to go…like, on the same continent.

As long as I’m being all curmudgeonly: Years ago a friend of mine swore he’d never enter a big-box store because “there’s nothing sold there that sustains life.” (This was before they started selling groceries.)

Walking through the few stores I’ve been in lately I’ve been astonished by the, well, silliness, for lack of a better word. What would happen if we cut out half the crap?

8 kinds of toothpaste instead of 20. Four kinds of sugary cereals instead of, oh, 9. Let’s get rid of truck nutcracker and “I’m with Stupid” t-shirts. Keep Crocs but dump the unicorn, flag, glitter, and camouflage lines.

What would happen if we traded conspicuous consumption for useful consumption? And - while you’re at it - get off my lawn.😤