re: Supply Chains Implode As "Price Doesn’t Even Matter Anymore"

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I'm betting on China. The 21st Century Competition will be won by China.



That Belt Road Initiative is going to kick the shite out of everyone else.

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China is a ponzi scheme waiting to implode

They have to simultaneously:

Placate the middle class with economic growth and material goods so they don't get restive over their lack of political and social freedom.

Keep a still-massive underclass under control who see that the benefits of modernization aren't trickling down to them.

Deal with restive minorities. When a man has nothing left to lose, you can't intimidate him any more. The Uighurs will figure that out sooner rather than later and the Tibetans will be watching with interest.

Try to assert their will on neighbors who universally hate and distrust them, and try to play a colonial game in the third world that every other empire has failed at.

Oh by the way there's a looming demographic bomb with an aging population and not enough young people being born to support them.

Maybe China will surmount all these challenges, but I'm betting on a Soviet-style implosion that nobody saw coming, except a few scholars who paid attention to the trends that were plain to see for anyone willing to look.

Alls I need to know is how much toilet paper to buy.

Nothing illustrates more the failure of the trade war than this crap. But for COVID crashing the economy last year the country would have set records on imports from China.

Trade wars never work. Taxing the consumers of goods from a particular country is foolish.

Making your country’s companies more competitive does work. We should have been restructuring our tax code, changing where the burden of health care falls away from employers onto the people that use it, changing our tort system to a system more like the Commonwealth Countries and limiting IP protection in our country of goods produced in countries that will not agree to enforce our IP.

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If only there were a country on this side of the ocean where we could manufacture products so we wouldn't be dependent on Chi na for goods.

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We tried nafta already.

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What do you think the cause is

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Long read but I’ll give you and everyone on this board a serious answer that’s 100% true. I’ve been in the import tropical hardwood business for 30 years. I import mahogany, Spanish Cedar, Burmese Teak, Ipe decking, African exotics, etc. The bulk of south Louisiana that has bought custom mahogany type doors and shutters for their homes probably have my lumber in or on their homes. For 10 years I’ve been paying around $3,000 per container from Malaysia, Myanmar, West Africa, and Brazil. Now I’m paying $13,000 to $15,000 per container and it started drastically going up 9 weeks ago. There are probably 1,000 cargo ships anchored up all over the globe just sitting there when they could be hauling product. Why you ask? That’s a good question the Dutch, Jews, a few Americans, and a few other nationalities need to answer. I’m no Biden fan but I can’t point the finger at him. You can’t get goods and products shipped to other countries or to this country in a timely manner. Asian countries want and need our products just as much as we want their offerings. The whole cargo ship issue is being manipulated by probably 100 people in this world just like a global monopoly. Odd thing is, my business is setting sales records after sales records the past two years and everyone I talk to in my industry are at an unprecedented level of busy and very profitable. The pine mills have in a sense shut down they are so busy and you might as well say are printing money. Someone said the trucking industry is hurting? That’s not accurate. Truckers can pick and choose their loads they haul and if you want something moved and it absolutely has to get there in Mobile, AL get ready to pay $4.00 to $5.00 per mile and that might not move your load if a driver doesn’t want to go where you need something shipped.

It’s bad all over. Air freight stocks are gonna be lit

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what is 9 figures?

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The former, though I'm sure there are some members that are just high 8s.

Wall Street Journal video
As someone that works in global supply chains, this is the best video I have seen that explains the issue in an easily understandable way.

What you're referring to with freight and truckers - is this a story where the largest players are getting all the market while everybody else is going out of business? Sounds like a combination of extreme retraced demand with limited options for fulfilment due to solvency issues from players who couldn't survive global lockdowns maybe?