Economics & Trade

Use this thread to post political commentary and news that’s specific to economics and world trade.

I found a really informative article about how Ocean Carriers have begun charging exorbitant fees for holding shipping containers, and how those fees are directly causing inflation

https://www.propublica.org/article/ocean-freight-shipping-costs-inflation

The Hidden Fees Making Your Bananas, and Everything Else, Cost More

“…The hauler that wanted $12,000 per container to move the bananas told the One Banana logistics specialist that it needed the money to cover a slew of fees the ocean carriers were tacking onto freight bills. Hapag-Lloyd, the German shipping giant that owned the containers the bananas were sitting in, had become particularly notorious in the freight industry, leading to multiple complaints to the Federal Maritime Commission.

In normal times, the fees, known as detention and demurrage, make a lot of sense. Importers who don’t pick up their stuff on time get charged demurrage for storage at the marine terminals. Truckers who don’t return an empty container on time pay late fees, or detention. The purpose of the penalties is to incentivize the various players in the supply chain to keep goods flowing…

But as supply chains snarled last year, the ports of Long Beach and Los Angeles ran out of room and became clogged with shipping containers that importers, often big-box retailers and brands, weren’t able to retrieve. Surrounding truckyards and streets were flooded with empty containers, temporarily dumped there by trucking companies that couldn’t get appointments to return them to the ports.

Hapag had made it “extremely difficult” to return empty containers, the trucking company said, and it was often left holding them for a month, all while Hapag continued to charge the firm $400 a day for each container that wasn’t returned on time. One trucking company that the importer contacted said it almost had to shut down temporarily because all the chassis — the steel frames with wheels that attach to trucks — that it needed to pull new loads from the ports were sitting under 70 empty containers that Hapag refused to take back.

Essentially, One Banana and several trucking companies said Hapag had created the situation it was now profiting from.

“It’s like renting a car at the airport, and when you try to return it, they’re saying, ‘No, you have to hang on to it for us, and we’re gonna continue to charge you,’” said Fred Johring, the CEO of one of the trucking firms, Golden State Logistics…”

I operate in a shoe-based economy.

I question both the author and intended audience of any article where an explanation of a chassis is deemed necessary.

2&2 Slider To Leyritz said:

I question both the author and intended audience of any article where an explanation of a chassis is deemed necessary.

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That’s a weird criticism. You assume most people know that metal storage containers all sit on individual chassis? I doubt most people have ever thought about how they are stored

I would assume that any adult knows what a vehicle chassis is, and in this context of trucking and shipping containers could infer the meaning if necessary.

But more specifically, yes, I would question the real world experience of anyone who has not seen shipping containers picked up off of cargo ships and dropped onto freight trains or trucks. If not in person then at least on TV or somewhere.

If someone writes something like that, to me it signals that they are coming at the issue from an angle of academia/intellectualism that is likely disconnected from any reality. Which is fine, but means their conclusions are likely poorly formed and probably off base to some degree as they have minimal knowledge of the underlying structure.

So respond to the points made in the article with your counter points outside of your chassis fetish, we are all waiting.

Louis Gossett Jr said:

So respond to the points made in the article with your counter points outside of your chassis fetish, we are all waiting.

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We spent several years paying people not to work, alongside eviction moratoriums that funneled all of that free money solely into discretionary spending. Combined with some legitimate supply chain issues, it created insane inflation that created additional artificial supply chain issues such as this. Those policies are now severely biting us in the ass.

To top it off, we have a leader who gets bent over with respect to any international trade issue. Despite all of Trump's heinous warts, do you think we would be in this position with him of being held hostage by international shipping companies? Absolutely not, he would tell them to cut the bullshit or lose the US market in its entirety. But Biden will just continue to take it up the ass and let them do what they want.

Our dependence on foreign goods has never been highlighted this much. The bright side is that the pricing and sourcing discrepancies could be enough to spur more domestic manufacturing. If we could get everyone who is trying to open a mediocre craft beer brewery focused on producing something constructive, we might get somewhere. But our regulatory system is currently not conducive to that in a variety of ways, so it will take time to get over those roadblocks.

Bingo!

Economics & Trade

This is a weird start to the thread. Since 2&2 wants to ignore the article I posted and just spam the boards with his anti-welfare screed, I’ll quickly summarize, during the pandemic, major ocean carriers have begun charging exorbitant fees for picking up shipping containers full of products, and returning empty shipping containers back to the ship. These fees are called detention and demurrage fees. Demurrage fees are charged when the shipping containers are not removed quickly enough from the port/terminal, and detention fees are charged when an empty shipping container is not returned quickly enough, which means that ocean carriers can basically hold shipments hostage until demurrage fees are paid, and they can control when and how containers can be returned, the process of which can be manipulated to drive up late fees, ala’ Blockbuster charging you a daily late fee but not allowing you to return your movie until days of fees have occurred. There are very few ocean carrying corporations and they absolutely have a monopoly, to which the entire world is at their mercy in regards to shipping costs.

i'll trade 4 wheat for 2 sheep

ImTheCaptain said:

i'll trade 4 wheat for 2 sheep

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Then you’d have longest road, fuck that

ImTheCaptain said:

i'll trade 4 wheat for 2 sheep

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You're free to trade your 4 wheat for 1 sheep from the communal bank.

you're free to have a warm glass of shut the hell up

NYT headline on the Fed trying to slow jobs growth to fight inflation

sweet economy

Stupid Fed

Jerome be like “Stupid poors have too much money.”

I wonder how common the brute devaluation of reward funny money is.

Y’all don’t think the fed should be trying to control inflation? Or that inflation doesn’t hurt people?

Not all inflation is the same. The Fed only has one tool in their toolbox.