5 ms·

> Erm, then pay some truckers to haul empty containers to some space in the middle of Arizona, Nevada, Texas, Idaho, Iowa, etc.? The empty containers don't nee

> Erm, then pay some truckers to haul empty containers to some space in the middle of Arizona, Nevada, Texas, Idaho, Iowa, etc.? The empty containers don't need to be trucked to Arizona, they need to be shipped back to China so that they can be filled with more goods and shipped back to LA. There are fewer goods flowing from the US to China though, so they are piling up in LA. Either the price of shipping from US to China has to fall so much that it becomes profitable to ship all these containers back completely empty, or the government has to subsidize the shipping cost - but then which government should even be responsible for paying for this?

koolba 5y ago
Too bad they didn’t switch to collapsible containers: https://www.shiplilly.com/blog/collapsible-shipping-containers-solving-issue-lopsided-trade/ https://www.shiplilly.com/blog/collapsible-shipping-containe... That would handle the trade imbalance by allowing more empties to fit on the way back. Or the USA could actually make something worth shipping. But that’s probably a lot harder than replacing a worldwide fleet of existing non-collapsible containers.
- khuey 5y ago
  Boeing aircaft and college educations, which are probably the two largest US exports to China, don't fit in shipping containers.
  - nradov 5y ago
    The US exports a lot of agricultural commodities to China. Those used to all be shipped in bulkers but now some are loaded into containers.
  - duped 5y ago
    https://ustr.gov/countries-regions/china-mongolia-taiwan/peoples-republic-china https://ustr.gov/countries-regions/china-mongolia-taiwan/peo... > The top export categories (2-digit HS) in 2019 were: electrical machinery ($14 billion); machinery ($13 billion); aircraft ($10 billion); optical and medical instruments ($9.7 billion); and vehicles ($9.1 billion).
- patentatt 5y ago
  Love the ingenuity, but isn’t needing to develop new technologies to overcome a severe trade imbalance just ignoring the larger problem of why there is such lopsided trade? It can’t be healthy or long-term sustainable for the US to basically stop manufacturing, can it?
bsder 5y ago
> Either the price of shipping from US to China has to fall so much that it becomes profitable to ship all these containers back completely empty, or the government has to subsidize the shipping cost What's happening is that everybody is playing chicken waiting for somebody else to blink and foot the bill for the fact that everything is out of whack. Why should the government break this logjam instead of the companies that sucked up all the profits over decades from this arrangement? Since nobody is going to risk spending money, breaking the logjam, and then having their competitor who isn't spending the money benefit, they would rather all hit the wall simultaneously. Fine. But don't come whining to the electorate and elected representatives to fix problems that corporations, themselves created when it bites them in the shorts. Spend some of those record profits, assholes, and the problems will get fixed. Socialism for the rich; capitalism for the poor. Same old, same old.
- IG_Semmelweiss 5y ago
  Did you not read the entire thread above your post? The issue seems to be a combination of factors exacerbated by the state of california. Existing regs restricting storage space. Existing regs restricting available trucking stuck holding containers Existing regs disincentivizing labor or new owner operators. All this is compounded it seems, by existing contracts limiting pay wait time. So when wait time increases, due to 1)no space, (2)no trucks, and (3) no labor... mostly due to circumstances directly attributable to the state then nothing moves. Where are the corporations making money off this ? Can you name them?
  - atq2119 5y ago
    The legal environment is not new to the companies operating in it. Nothing in that environment prevented them from preparing properly, yet they didn't. Example for why your argument doesn't hold water: one of the issues mentioned in the thread is that trucking companies can only stack containers two high in their yards. Well, what do you think would have happened if that regulation had been changed to six high (one of the suggestions) 20 years ago? Trucking companies would now own or lease smaller yards! GP is absolutely right that the capitalists need to foot the bill of clearing this mess. It does seem to me that government should step in to resolve the Gordic knot of coordination problems discussed elsewhere in the thread, but the companies who screwed it up in the first place need to be stuck with the bill. That's part of the deal of capitalism: you get the chance of profits, but also the risk of losses.

koolba 5y ago

Too bad they didn’t switch to collapsible containers: https://www.shiplilly.com/blog/collapsible-shipping-containers-solving-issue-lopsided-trade/ https://www.shiplilly.com/blog/collapsible-shipping-containe... That would handle the trade imbalance by allowing more empties to fit on the way back. Or the USA could actually make something worth shipping. But that’s probably a lot harder than replacing a worldwide fleet of existing non-collapsible containers.

khuey 5y ago
Boeing aircaft and college educations, which are probably the two largest US exports to China, don't fit in shipping containers.
- nradov 5y ago
  The US exports a lot of agricultural commodities to China. Those used to all be shipped in bulkers but now some are loaded into containers.
- duped 5y ago
  https://ustr.gov/countries-regions/china-mongolia-taiwan/peoples-republic-china https://ustr.gov/countries-regions/china-mongolia-taiwan/peo... > The top export categories (2-digit HS) in 2019 were: electrical machinery ($14 billion); machinery ($13 billion); aircraft ($10 billion); optical and medical instruments ($9.7 billion); and vehicles ($9.1 billion).
patentatt 5y ago
Love the ingenuity, but isn’t needing to develop new technologies to overcome a severe trade imbalance just ignoring the larger problem of why there is such lopsided trade? It can’t be healthy or long-term sustainable for the US to basically stop manufacturing, can it?

bsder 5y ago

> Either the price of shipping from US to China has to fall so much that it becomes profitable to ship all these containers back completely empty, or the government has to subsidize the shipping cost What's happening is that everybody is playing chicken waiting for somebody else to blink and foot the bill for the fact that everything is out of whack. Why should the government break this logjam instead of the companies that sucked up all the profits over decades from this arrangement? Since nobody is going to risk spending money, breaking the logjam, and then having their competitor who isn't spending the money benefit, they would rather all hit the wall simultaneously. Fine. But don't come whining to the electorate and elected representatives to fix problems that corporations, themselves created when it bites them in the shorts. Spend some of those record profits, assholes, and the problems will get fixed. Socialism for the rich; capitalism for the poor. Same old, same old.

IG_Semmelweiss 5y ago
Did you not read the entire thread above your post? The issue seems to be a combination of factors exacerbated by the state of california. Existing regs restricting storage space. Existing regs restricting available trucking stuck holding containers Existing regs disincentivizing labor or new owner operators. All this is compounded it seems, by existing contracts limiting pay wait time. So when wait time increases, due to 1)no space, (2)no trucks, and (3) no labor... mostly due to circumstances directly attributable to the state then nothing moves. Where are the corporations making money off this ? Can you name them?
- atq2119 5y ago
  The legal environment is not new to the companies operating in it. Nothing in that environment prevented them from preparing properly, yet they didn't. Example for why your argument doesn't hold water: one of the issues mentioned in the thread is that trucking companies can only stack containers two high in their yards. Well, what do you think would have happened if that regulation had been changed to six high (one of the suggestions) 20 years ago? Trucking companies would now own or lease smaller yards! GP is absolutely right that the capitalists need to foot the bill of clearing this mess. It does seem to me that government should step in to resolve the Gordic knot of coordination problems discussed elsewhere in the thread, but the companies who screwed it up in the first place need to be stuck with the bill. That's part of the deal of capitalism: you get the chance of profits, but also the risk of losses.