SoCal port shipments down - lowest in 20 years

Another sign of a very bad recession, coupled with evidence of our national economic decline:

The ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach saw a decline in container traffic during 2007 for the first time in at least 20 years.
...
The report said that finished goods, apparel, toys and electronics make up a majority of imported goods. Exported goods are generally lower-value goods like cotton, animal feed and scrap metal.

Yes - you saw that right - we import electronics and export scrap metal!

from:
http://www.labusinessjournal.com/industry_article.asp?aID=2339581.8279178.1576042.4187547.6662024.301&aID2=121225&cID=b

to "mother" countries, where they are turned into finished and then sold back to us-as overpriced imports.

exporting scrap for a long time. In the container business you have to have a balance of container flows between oceans. Since more goods are imported to the US than exported, it would follow that there would be a lot of empty containers going from the US to Asia. But shipping rates are also set by commodity. Thus it's a deal to send scrap to Asia for recycling because it's better to carry low revenue cargo than empties. Even 20 years ago we used to carry a lot of scrap paper and scrap electronics to Asia.

Japan has been a buyer of US scrap metal for many years. In fact the cutting off of US exports may have been a factor in the decision to attack Pear Harbor.

One of the peculiar problems with containerized shipping is that there are periodic gluts of capacity which causes the rates to drop. What happens as a result is commodities such as cement become economical to ship by container. But that also drives the size of the ships because big ships have a lower unit operating cost. Until the shipment of high revenue cargo (electronics for example) catches up to capacity. It is the high revenue cargo which also sets the pace for vessel speed since the interest on the cargo becomes significant. It is not unusual for a vessel to carry several billion dollars worth of cargo. To shave a few days off shipping time is a significant advantage for a carrier.

The trend lately has been to ever larger and faster vessels.

(By way of info, I am a retired Container ship Chief Engineer)

The article clearly states that exports are up and imports have slowed. That would be a good thing.

As for scrap metal, the U.S. embargoed oil and Scrap Metal to Japan in 1940, which many historians believe led to the attack on Pearl Harbor.

Not all history has happened in the last 7 years, and those that don't learn from it....

What did we import from Japan in 1940? Were we importing sophisticated consumer electronics that were no longer being manufactured domestically? How much of our need for manufactured goods was met by domestic production in 1940, and how much is met now?

Is a nation that export scrap metal and imports most of its consumer goods in a sustainable economic position? How have we been financing our balance of trade deficit?

Do you think a country that exports raw materials and in turn imports complex manufactured goods is really an "advanced" country economically?

Is an increase in low value exports a good thing for our country? What sort of society are we that only has a competitive advantage in scrap metal, cotton, and animal feed?

Is the first decline in 20 years in total shipments supposed to be a good thing because exports make up a greater portion of the smaller total? Is a decline in port activity (the first in 20 years) the sign of a vital growing economy? Are the lower revenues and lolst port jobs now a sign of prosperity?

If exports are growing, then are jobs in scrap metal, animal feed, and cotton the sorts of jobs that can sustain the middle class society that we like to think of ourselves as?

info.
I'm currently involved in exporting. We're trying to ship US Ag products from Seattle to India.
We've had a really tough time, it seems that there is currently an embargo going on. No one wants to take our products and ship them.

Caused by just exactly the background info which you stated above.

It appears that there are containers piling up in Chennai. The freight forwarder told me that trade between India & Europe is booming, so it's causing a huge logistics problem.

This is a billion dollar industry, and it's causing some big problems.

Thanks for the background info.
:smoke:

"advanced" countries like China. China graduates engineers; we graduate more lawyers. China exports electronics; we export scrap metal and animal foods. We import more and more of the things we use - on credit. This is simply not sustainable, and we are rapidly heading for a fall.