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Biden Strikes Again!
One more time, Biden is supposedly going to rescue the country. This time he’s going to solve the supply chain mess. And you’ll never guess what he’s done: He’s “convinced” the port authorities to work 24/7 to unload the containers stuck on ships. Depending on whose estimates you accept, there are 500,000 to 1 million containers waiting to be unloaded.
Biden also boasted about how businesses were going to help him out:
The White House said that FedEx, UPS and Walmart also are committing to increase cargo-processing work hours so that the work never ceases. And Biden called on other major shipping and retail companies to follow.
‘Walmart is committing as much as a 50 percent increase in the use of off-peak hours over the next several weeks,’ Biden said.
‘Additionally, FedEx and UPS, two of our nation’s biggest freight movers, are committing today to significantly increase the amount of goods they’re moving at night… Their commitment to go all in on 24/7 operations means that businesses of all sizes will get their goods on the shelves faster and more reliably.’
I’m finding these commitments quite remarkable. First, there is a shortage of workers all over the country; that would include all kinds of cargo-processing workers, as well as truck drivers, who aren’t permitted to exceed limits on driving hours.
Where are all these executives at the ports and at companies going to find the people to pick up the pace, especially when the backlog is so huge?
Am I missing something? Or is Biden making up stories again?
Maybe I should have made the title “Biden Strikes Out Again.”
Published in Business
I saw an interview a few days ago that (I think) LA was running 24 hours a day, and has set a world record for unloading or through-putting and had for the first time ever beaten Singapore.
The phrase is “emergent”: even people who understand the mesh of interconnected nodes and conduits that make up the full shipping network can’t know its state at any given moment, and it’s far too complex for individuals or supercomputers to model in real time.
That’s why central planning doesn’t work. In general, getting out of the way is the most effective strategy for dealing with problems on a large scale. And that, unfortunately, is one of the things that the notoriously inept Brandon administration is least good at doing.
Ditto.
A related piece by Joel Kotkin at Quillette: Confronting the Supply Chain Crisis.
It’s a very worthwhile piece. One thing Kotkin does not mention is that there have been marketing as well as cost drivers for offshoring: many countries have made it clear that if you don’t make your product in that country, or at least make a substantial part of it there, don’t expect to sell much of it there, either.
One reason why it’s also important for the emptied containers to be returned to the ports and sent back. But there doesn’t seem to be much understanding of that aspect.
“Complexity” is often cited as justification for central government control. Yet it has always seemed intuitiv to me that complexity is intuitively why central control is a bad idea. There is no way for a single individual or a manageably small group of individuals to know or see enough to effectively and efficiently manage a complex system.
I’ve know people who will trade favors in foreign countries and a couple of them wanted products made for the American market. They were under the impression that even when the same item, made by the same company was intended for the US market, it was better made and would last longer.
Three cheers for returning to the norms – David French must be so proud of this president
I just heard a report that the Idiot-in-Chief has asked/begged the oil companies to lower their prices. Is he really too stupid to understand the effects of his policy decisions?
I hope someone told him “One way to lower energy prices would be to finish the Keystone Pipeline.”
But even if they did, he probably doesn’t remember.
A lot of the people who voted for him were, so…
Some, apparently including a lot of people in New Mexico especially the governor, had the idea that NM would be exempted. HAH!
To be fair, we should remember that early in the Trump administration he was taking credit for jawboning industries to keep specific factories and jobs in the U.S. (I don’t remember the details; maybe someone else does.)
Maybe Biden is trying to imitate Trump.
BTW, don’t forget to teach your children and grandchildren to thank Biden for giving them a happy childhood. (I presume some people here will understand the reference.)
If that’s true, he really has lost his mind.
He’d better start with, “We’re gonna cure dementia!”
The official slogan of the Biden/Harris campaign was “Build Back Better” but the real slogan was “Suckers!”
That was meant more to be a dig at Biden supporters, in case any are lurking here.
Excellent explanation and discussion. Thank you.
Linked this post at Chicago Boyz, where there is a related discussion: World Ocean Shipping at a Glance.
Their fix was noticeably weak on credible details. I also suspect that was because they are going to use our taxpayer dollars to bail out another mess of California’s doing.