Stocking up on Containers of Vapor

[NB: check the byline, thanks. / ~Rayne]

Hold this image in your mind for a few moments; I thought of it after listening to some right-wing propaganda about the tariffs and shipping. Marcy’s post this morning about the emergency-not-emergency trade deficit brought to mind again:

Port of Rotterdam Moored Vessels by Johan Jongkind, c. 1857

[Port of Rotterdam Moored Vessels by Johan Jongkind, c. 1857]

Way back in my salad days I worked in import/export. With the exception of a rather messy breakbulk import of niger seed from Ethiopia, I handled exports of agricultural commodities and manufactured goods.

It wasn’t the kind of work one learned in B-school. I learned it all on the job: which products needed phytosanitary certificates; how to handle letters of credit; what to do if customer wanted to charter a plane for a load of 20-foot pipe lengths; what the difference was between terms like EXW, FOB, and CIF. Not the textbook definitions, but the reality-smacks-you-with-a-container-overboard definition.

I also learned how to use intermodal shipping to ports overseas, to what used to be among the largest ports in the world. Felixstowe, Rotterdam, and Kaohsiung were the ports to which I shipped most often.

Trump’s tariffs and the ensuing change in ocean shipping volume triggered a lot of flashbacks over the last couple of weeks, though much has changed since I worked in exports. The current list of largest containerized shipment terminal ports is an indicator of the magnitude of change. Rotterdam no longer cracks the top ten largest ports by shipping volume, while most of the ports in the current top ten are now in China and were definitely not on the list +30 years ago.

Tracking vessels on maps in real time is something I wished I could have had back then. When our freight was loaded on a vessel we didn’t really have anything more than an estimated arrival date by which to plan our load’s arrival. For my first job in exports we didn’t even have email let alone fax to communicate about a shipment’s status.

I used one of these beasts:

Telex machine model ASR-32, via Wikipedia

It’s just a boat anchor now.

But some things haven’t changed in that period of time. Heck, they haven’t changed much since international shipping looked like the image I shared at the top of this post.

When a port is active, there are ships at the dock. Freight is unloaded. There are vehicles moving that freight about.

Here are two examples of an active port:

Moored container ships unloaded at Port of Rotterdam, 1750h 30-APR-2025 via YouTube

[Moored container ships unloaded at Port of Rotterdam, 1750h 30-APR-2025 via YouTube]

Port of Jakarta container terminal gate 0123h local time, 06-MAY-2025 via YouTube

[Port of Jakarta container terminal gate 0123h local time, 06-MAY-2025 via YouTube]

Compare the above to this very inactive port:

Port of Long Beach/Los Angeles-Wilmington, 0848h local time, 30-APR-2025 via EarthCam

[Port of Long Beach/Los Angeles-Wilmington, 0848h local time, 30-APR-2025 via EarthCam]

Screenshot of container vessel tracking 1300h ET 11-MAY-2025 via MyShipTracking

[Screenshot of container vessel tracking 1300h ET 11-MAY-2025 via MyShipTracking]

The dates on the images of the inactive port may be more than a week apart, but the level of activity has been consistently low over that time period.

Ships moored, being loaded or unloaded, moving to or from docks are all signs of an active port. While cranes hover above, tugboats and other service vessels move about between ships.

Even in low- to no-wake zones, the water shows activity.

There are people and vehicles scuttling about, moving freight once offloaded. Only in an inactive port are there expanses of pavement with no freight, no trucks, trailers, or other vehicles, no people.

Not like the activity visible in the live stream of the container port terminal at Jakarta, Indonesia shown above as an example.

This hasn’t changed in hundreds of years. Not in millennia.

When propagandists declare the drop in ocean shipments to ports in the US is a hoax, they’ve lost touch with a reality based in human history. When they say this is just a temporary hiccup they’re just as out of it.

They are unmoored, one might say.

I’m not going to link to one video in particular that uses ship schedules as an argument freight from China is still inbound to US west coast ports and at volume. It’s an ignorant argument based on a lack of knowledge about container vessels. Container lines still schedule arrivals at port because they may have a partial vessel on a long-arranged route and they don’t want to lose access to the slot in case of a brief disruption in shipping volume. The booking shows as an incoming ship on the schedule even though the container line may be scrambling to consolidate partial loads onto one vessel to reduce fuel.

In some cases ships will approach a port and skip it if they have freight for a different port – let’s say a container vessel from a Chinese port normally scheduled to make sequential drops at Vancouver BC, Long Beach, and Manzanillo MX moors at Vancouver then skips Long Beach and heads for Manzanillo.

It’s clumsily explained as “blank sailing” as CNN’s Erin Burnett explained clumsily on April 25:

That’s why container ship volume crossing the Pacific may continue to look busy on short-term schedules, but containers may not arrive at US west coast ports. Eventually the container line reorganizes and consolidates freight so that it can altogether drop some sailings. Just as in trucking, container lines don’t want the equivalent of deadhead hauls.

And yes, there are some container ships in the screenshot of a vessel tracking site shared widely last week. There are few container ships in that snap of Port of Seattle.

Compare the activity in Port of Kaohsiung, Taiwan, which is no longer in the top ten largest ports based on shipping volume, smaller than Port of Long Beach. It’s crowded with container vessels:

Screenshot of container vessel tracking at Port of Kaohsiung, Taiwan 1300h ET 11-MAY-2025 via MyShipTracking

[Screenshot of container vessel tracking at Port of Kaohsiung, Taiwan 1300h ET 11-MAY-2025 via MyShipTracking]

Let me point out that Port of Long Beach-Los Angeles is the 9th busiest container port; Rotterdam is 13th and Kaohsiung is 17th. Jakarta doesn’t even crack the top 50 busiest container ports.

The freight is not coming. It’s not sailing between China and the US west coast, it’s not in the west coast ports. We can literally see this from space, by way of GPS tracking. There are no container vessels waiting off west coast ports for a berth. There will not suddenly be ships off the west coast before the end of the month.

Why the right-wing insists on lying about this rather than bracing themselves and preparing the country for the reality check to come in mere days is beyond me. They can’t spew enough believable denials to hide the shelves as they empty in the days and weeks ahead. They can’t cover up the damage already done to the US economy, the worst of which has yet to arrive.

Conditions won’t change much based on the so-called 90-day pause and temporary tariff reduction announced overnight. It’s still going to take time for factories in China to ramp back up, rejigger containerized shipping – and all of this is at risk of being changed again in 90 days. The loss of faith by consumers and business purchasers here in the states may not be restored as quickly.

The reduction of tariffs on Chinese goods from 145% to 30% will not be enough to prevent some businesses from failing. Those operating on margins of less than 10% are at extreme risk during the next several months.

Or maybe less if Trump vacillates again.

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90 replies
    • Gacyclist says:

      The right wing media knows it’s target audience, magas, will take all they say at face value. It’s too bad they don’t have something like internet to fact check. Let’s not forget tho, at peak of the pandemic right wing went into overdrive to prove hospitals were empty.

  1. P J Evans says:

    There are already businesses closing because of the @#$%^&*(!!! Felon Guy and his disconnected-from-reality view of the world. That won’t change in the next 90 days. (And that ship-tracking shot of LA-LB Harbor? Not many waiting to get in. That’s bad.

  2. drhester says:

    Agent of chaos and complete and utter bullshit is running this country. God help us. And quickly please.

  3. christopher rocco says:

    I drove through the San Francisco Bay Area two weeks ago today, April 28, on I-880 which runs through the East Bay (Alameda County) and by the Port of Oakland. I did a double take when I noticed not a single ship at the container terminals and no containers on the docks, on truck chassis or on rail cars. There was nothing going on. I’m not sure where the Port of Oakland ranks in terms of activity, but it looked ike a ghost town.

    • Rayne says:

      Oakland doesn’t make the global top 50 container ports but it’s bigger than Baltimore and New Orleans. Still very ungood that it’s void of activity.

      Here’s Long Beach/Los Angeles terminals this morning, for comparison to the Jakarta terminal shot above:
      Screen

      • boatgeek says:

        Good Lord, that’s terrifying. Every one of those lanes would have trucks lined up 10 deep in normal times.

        [I know you know that, just pointing it out for others]

        • Rayne says:

          I wish I had thought to take screencaps before Trump took office of economic benchmarks like these container terminals.

          This is and has been our challenge: a lack of imagination when it comes to the depths of stupidity and corruption to which this regime will sink let alone aspire. Who could have imagined 145% tariffs? As if 100% wouldn’t have been enough. As if flipping the bird at every US business relying on international trade was likely given Trump’s propensity to promote tax relief to help businesses.

        • BRUCE F COLE says:

          @Rayne, 2:55:

          We weren’t paranoid enough. Prediction: when the bare-shelf-shit hits the fan, they’ll blame Buttigieg.

          China, being a command economy and with strengthening relationships across the non-US globe (much of which is thanks to both Trump’s alienation of everyone else and USAID’s summary execution), can weather whatever fallout occurs relative to Trump’s public masturbation sessions with relative ease compared to the self-isolating, self-harming USA.

        • P J Evans says:

          The aerial views on Google can help visualize it – they show the trainloads of containers, the trucks, the containers parked by the docks. And some of the very large ships in port.

      • earlofhuntingdon says:

        Many ports, such as Baltimore, are the biggest transhipment point for miles.

  4. Savage Librarian says:

    Thanks so much for sharing your expertise with us, Rayne. And the visuals were superlative. Very helpful. Back in my salad days I worked as a proofreader in what was then a nationally prominent accounting firm. They had a U. S. Senator as a client and a best selling author, among many other clients. They also had something that looked similar to what you say has become a “boat anchor.” Makes me wonder what things will look like in 50 years. Yikes!

  5. boatgeek says:

    As someone who designs some of the support boats that serve the ships (mainly tugs and fuel barges), it’s been very weird to see how light traffic is into the PNW. I had an informal gauge for economic activity–whether there were lots of empty spaces on containerships coming in. Full ships indicate a good economy. I have no calibration curve for no ships at all.

    On another topic entirely I realized this morning that the corrupt Air Force One deal with Qatar saves no money or time vs. the existing plan. Trump won’t get his shiny new plane either way. And it won’t be cheaper either. First of all, they’re going to have to strip the plane down to the studs to find the surveillance devices on board. It’s not even a question of whether they’re there, it’s how many of the devices are found. Then the Pentagon will have to add in all of the electronics and defense mechanisms that make AF1 a mobile command post. Installing and integrating those into an airframe are what’s taking Boeing until 2029 to deliver AF1 on the old contract. The airframe is cheap. Integrating electronics is expensive. On top of all that, the Pentagon will have to remove all of that stuff before returning it to Trump’s personal use later.

    • Rayne says:

      With Hegseth running DoD, I doubt the security check of that Qatari plane will happen. It’ll be a massive ongoing intelligence leak as well as an outright bribe.

    • rosalind says:

      long ago I worked at Foss Tugs in the Environmental division. they had just come out with their new “tractor” design. i have fun with friends who can’t believe there used to be annual Tugboat Races out on Elliot Bay, which was one of my favorite events of the year. When they got to the Ocean Going class, watch out.

    • harpie says:

      1] May 11, 2025 9:47 PM ABC publishes:
      Trump administration poised to accept ‘palace in the sky’ as a gift for Trump from Qatar: Sources The luxury jumbo jet is to be used as Air Force One, sources told ABC News. https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/trump-administration-poised-accept-palace-sky-gift-trump/story?id=121680511
      Jonathan Karl and Katherine Faulders

      2] May 11, 2025 at 9:47 PM William Shakespeare, Bard of BlueSky:
      https://bsky.app/profile/shakespeare.lol/post/3lowtzryxhk2j

      ’Tis thought, my lord, that you took bribes

      • AndreLgreco says:

        Perhaps it will be fitted with twin 50 cal. machine guns in the tail in honor of ‘Tailgunner Joe’ McCarthy.

    • depressed Chris says:

      Some DoD aircraft production is, by law, required to be produced from the ground-up in the U.S.. Air Force One is one of them. It is impractical, expensive, and almost impossible to disassembly a “green” aircraft. “Green” meaning a basic air frame before it is customized into a passenger, cargo, or POTUS hauler. You would also void its FAA flight-worthiness certification. A potential Air Force One is inspected at every point for quality of work, adherence to security concerns, and baked-in special stuff. There is no foreign substitute. Any use of the “gift” aircraft would, sooner or later, come back to bite us. My idea is the New York State courts should impound it and put a lien on it until he satisfies his lost case obligations.

      • Gacyclist says:

        This has played before under this regime. He’ll write an EO requiring dod to accept the aircraft, directed tens of millions to be spent on it. It’ll then be fought in the courts.

      • Zeno Vatali says:

        Does anyone know if E. Jean Carroll ever received any money from Trump?

        [Welcome back to emptywheel. Please use the SAME USERNAME and email address each time you comment so that community members get to know you. You attempted to publish this comment under what may be your RL name, triggering auto-moderation; it has been edited to reflect your established username. Please check your browser’s cache and autofill; future comments may not publish if username does not match. /~Rayne]

  6. ToldainDarkwater says:

    I too, used a teletype in one of my first jobs. It was for a civil-engineering project support. We would calculate and print “cut sheets” for a sewer. This is something that could easily be done with a pc and a printer, but maybe it’s just directly downloaded to the contractors now. I don’t really know.

    But a great nostalgia thing.

    • Konny_2022 says:

      Thanks for the link! It’s just amazing to watch. BTW, “MarineTraffic” has a Wikipedia entry.

  7. P J Evans says:

    Friend once had to send a telex for work, but the connection was down. He went through the long way with a teletype connection to Telex (not simple, but it did work). The things you learn…

  8. Magnet48 says:

    I just need to clarify for myself that ALL the current reports of incoming ships/containers on the west coast are false according to actual visual sight. The administration is egregiously lying to the public. And no news source covers or admits the obvious lying. I had seen a report from, I think, Business Insider a few weeks ago saying LA port activity had increased 40%(?) over this time last year. And then read independent journalists who stated that zero activity was actually occurring. The trump government is lying to the American people with the help of news sources.

    • Rayne says:

      I think I’d hunt down that Business Insider link because the 40% change has been reported widely as a *decrease* not increase.

      And I think that 40% figure should have been pinned down to a specific time because the images I’m seeing *now* tell me the percentage decrease is much, much higher.

      • Magnet48 says:

        I couldn’t track down the link but the justification in the article seemed to be that although the 40% was lower, the income from that 40% exceeded the previous year’s intake…on each individual container. Yay! The tariffs are working! Then potential income from “projected” traffic would be phenonomonal, thus greater $ucce$$. These people live in an imaginary world.

    • Harry Eagar says:

      See Sal Mercogliano’s ‘What’s Up with Shipping’ channel on Youtube. He’s updating the container situation 2 or 3 times a week.

      He spends much of his time correcting disinformation and he knows his stuff.

      Untangling the noise is a chore, since importers have to cope with a new tariff regime every few days, and everybody is trying to game the system; not easy to do without fixed rules.

      I’d just like to point out that everybody (that I checked, which means NYTimes, Washington Post, LATimes, Bloomberg, CNBC and Fox Business) missed the two most important words in trump’s Maduro-style ramblings Monday: score and score.

      He said CBO (though he did not name it) would have to score hundreds of billions of tariff income and more hundreds in drug savings. He did not say why. I cannot understand why no one caught this. trump lives in a fantasy but somebody told him there’s no covering the reconciliation rules in his big, beautiful bill, so the real reason he made his Monday announcements was to ‘gin up some mythical revenue.

      I’m not saying he wasn’t also under pressure to cave on tariffs for tariffing reasons, but the real reason was that he’s in a panic over the tax/revenue bill.

      Something really bad is brewing and it’s not about empty shelves. Johnson — who looks to me like a deer in the headlights — has to prevent a default and at the same time deliver a governing bill that can pass.

  9. rosalind says:

    years ago i temped at Sea-Land in Seattle for a few weeks, in their downtown office with spectacular views of Elliot Bay, for a woman in charge of “booking” the containers coming and going. it was fascinating watching how she filled each ship up, container by container. her routes were all in Asia.

    i live by the railroad tracks and see the freight trains headed to and from B.C., and the rail traffic is down significantly. (less rail noise great for me, not so much for the economy).

    • P J Evans says:

      As a kid, I’d read the arriving/departing shipping information in the business section of the area paper. That was the 60s, so containers were not the thing. (That was for both SF and Oakland.) If that kind of info is still available it would show the lying going on.

  10. chocolateislove says:

    This past weekend, I was driving college chocolate home to west MI from their out of state college. We saw several trains of shipping containers along the way, which we usually do. It didn’t seem like there were fewer trains or shorter trains this year.

    But I did wonder if that was the last of the shipping containers before the tariff hikes. Very much a feeling of “enjoy it while it lasts”.

    I’ve made note of these trains and I’ll be watching for the trains when we drive back in August. I want to see if there is a marked difference.

    • Rayne says:

      What you can’t tell from the trains you saw: are those containers full, partial, or empty? If freight rates are fluid and falling for lack of freight, there maybe efforts to move containers around to different yards while the cost is cheaper.

      • thequickbrownfox says:

        Speaking of freight rates, now there is a 90 day window to get as much shipped to U.S. ports as can be done. This just opened a competition for container space aboard vessels, so all arriving goods will not just be at tariff + regular shipping rates, but tariff + rates determined by higher shipping costs due to scarcity of cargo space. If the end of covid supply problems, and higher prices for goods, are an indication, we have interesting times ahead.

        • Harry Eagar says:

          Keep in mind that tariffs apply to wholesale price, and retail price will be in the neighborhood of twice that for consumer goods, so that a 10% tariff shows up to the voter as a 4%-6% inflation. I think everybody on the left is wildly overestimating the everyday voter’s response.

          Walmart ain’t going broke. But the small firms that live on 90-day invoices with (for most) essentially no reserves are going to be slaughtered. And since the non-SBA local bank commercial loan went extinct generations ago, there is going to be (in some fashion) a huge call on the Treasury. No idea how big and no more idea how gummint will react, but — equally — so far as I can see, no one is even thinking about that.

  11. dimmsdale says:

    Thanks for your expertise, Rayne. Thanks also for your back-pages reminiscences (my previous line of work depended on freestanding, constantly chattering teletype machines to provide news feeds, so I can relate).

    I wonder if you’ve got a read yet on the YouTube channel “What’s Going On with Shipping”? Seems pretty professional and on the up & up, as far as I can tell, but I’d be curious to know what an expert thinks.

    • Rayne says:

      Sal Mercogliano’s “What’s Going on With Shipping?” can be informative, but I hesitate to give him unqualified approval because he makes some swags.

      Example 1: at 2:43 in his latest video, Is the Trade War Over? | Port and Tariff Update as of May 12, 2025, he points to vessels that recently departed Chinese ports and are scheduled as destination Los Angeles.

      Except that’s a booked arrival, not an indication of actual freight expected at port, not a moored vessel.

      Example 2a: Sal goes on at length about the ships arriving at west coast ports, even pointing to the Evergreen terminal (a Chinese container ship line) at Los Angeles, saying there’s been ships.

      Except the port terminal’s web camera doesn’t lie. See:
      https://www.earthcam.com/usa/california/losangeles/port/?cam=portofla

      If you look at the video from 1300h local time through the archives that go back at least 24 hours, you’ll see only (1) vessel arrived at Evergreen’s terminal, the Taiwanese Yang Ming line’s container ship. Exactly (1) other ship, a ONE line vessel, sails by to another terminal. That’s it at what is the U.S.’s busiest port for container ships from China over a 24-hour period.

      Example 3: Sal makes another swag about buyers here in the US having made planned purchases which sat in inventory overseas waiting for a break in tariffs. He assumes shipping will pickup bigly during this next 90 days.

      WHO CAN AFFORD TO DO THIS? The market has vacillated widely, the Dow Jones going down 16% from its high of 44882 on 1/30/2025 to 37645 on 4/8/2025. Businesses can’t afford the risk of buying goods overseas, paying demurrage on containerized freight, uncertain whether they can sell what they’ve bought if the market tanks further and consumer spending collapses.

      Example 2b: Webcams tells us a different story.

      Evergreen container terminal (large orange circle) and another container terminal (smaller orange circle) have been unoccupied most of the last three days still readily available on EarthCam archive.

      This webcam is located just west of the Battleship USS Iowa Museum, aimed along the channel.

      The webcam only caught three container vessels in the last three days traveling along the main channel — two Yang Ming and one ONE-NYK. One of the Yang Ming looked like it didn’t offload most of its freight.

      • xyxyxyxy says:

        Dow is almost back to that Jan level.
        I don’t understand as businesses are no longer providing future predictions on earnings because of uncertainty, and how do you predict with no product to sell?

        • Rayne says:

          The stock market isn’t rational. Too many individuals are literally playing in the market, driving meme stocks up or down based on vibes and not on market fundamentals.

          If Trump had instituted an 80% tariff on Chinese goods and just stayed there from the beginning, the market certainly wouldn’t have done what it this week. A substantive part of the market’s reaction is about AI stocks and Trump backing off restrictions. Who knows how long that will last?

          Let me guess that cash infusion into Trump coins from a small Chinese company may have been related to all of this.

        • xyxyxyxy says:

          I wouldn’t be surprised if he did a bailout and the market may be looking for that.

  12. PeteT0323 says:

    Yes, thanks Ryan for a very interesting post on many levels.

    Since this is an open thread, something kind of unrelated to this popped into my mind. I am sure many of you have experienced it their lines of work. Tell us more…

    The ride-to-the-rescue chaos agent (there must be a better term). A person who – if they are very very good – starts chaos and then rides to the rescue in order to bask in the glory of being such a chaos responder fixer person.

    I have dealt with several. The one that pops into my mind – let’s call him Leo because that was his name.

    Leo was the chief money guy. Not CFO that I recall. This firm was small by any standard – a niche electronics start up that developed some lasting power until it didn’t have the right product for the times. Lots of NASA back in the days well before ICs and modern digital electronics. Back when 8MB RAM was a whole lot.

    Leo was pretty good because to be good you had to be able to mask you (him) stirring the pot. Why? So that you as the rescuer/problem solver – whatever – could max out the glory to be heaped upon you as the (re)solver. But eventually you screw up. Oops.

    Trump is a little different in that he may be a good pot stirrer, but he is anything but subtle about it. Or truthful – DUH!. Create a (real) tariff problem and then come to the rescue. I mean the round trip from then (China tariffs) to 145% China tariffs back too 30% (then) tariffs and “all hail the genius of Trump>. F*ck no.

    I guess I should not be surprised that the markets react the way they do – after all that’s just unbridled capitalism (or worse). I guess I am also not surprised that if I look at the Mr Toad’s Wild Ride of my retirement funds in even moderately “safe” investments there is a much different Wild Ride not quite back to where they were.

    I’d say cash in the mattress, but that might even be a cheap way to stay warm setting it on fire one day.

    • Rayne says:

      If I’d been assigned male at birth, my folks wouldn’t have named me Ryan, I must tell you. :-)

      • PeteT0323 says:

        Well sh*t.. I am going to have a long talk with my index finger and then my spill chucker.

        See what I mean. :-) back at you.

  13. earlofhuntingdon says:

    Rotterdam may no longer crack the top ten ports, but it’s still the busiest port in Europe, almost double the next highest in tonnage, Antwerp. Both dwarf the Port of London. Says a lot about how much commerce has shifted to Asia.

  14. Rugger_9 says:

    As the post notes, there is a long lead time for scheduling shifts in traffic patterns, which for me makes the 90-day suspension of tariffs even more ridiculous. It did make the market happy, though but unless these tariffs are permanently knocked down, it’s another bit of flim-flam from Convict-1 / Krasnov. Perhaps there should be an examination of who bought what when, looking for another pump-and-dump.

    • thequickbrownfox says:

      The ‘flim-flam administration’. The whole damn lot of them are liars and grifters that do not believe in government ‘Of the People, By the People and For the People’. It’s all about #1 to them.

  15. higgs boson says:

    Another data point. My brother’s apartment overlooks the Port of Tacoma. He says the last container ship left port on Friday, fully loaded with containers, but with about 8 feet of freeboard — suggesting that most of those containers were empties. Now, no ships, all cranes idle.

    …not sure freeboard is the right word.

    • Rugger_9 says:

      Not technically, since freeboard goes to the main deck (i.e. the topmost watertight deck that extends along the entire hull). However, the waterline marking does give a good indication of loading and 8 feet is a lot for a container ship that is ostensibly loaded and outbound. So, they’re not full.

    • Harry Eagar says:

      They never are. Even in good times, US physical exports never come close to physical imports.

  16. bloopie2 says:

    Well, the absence of ships is your fault, you know. You kept buying things from China, and you chose to allow our beloved capitalist system to stop producing things in the US. Why did you not choose to keep America “Great”?

    • Rayne says:

      Where was this great orange bawbag when all these businesses were moving manufacturing overseas, by the way?

      Too busy hiring undocumented workers for his new golf resorts financed with Russian money?

  17. Bob Roundhead says:

    I was beginning to doubt my eyes. I had driven over the Vincent Thomas on Thursday on my way to location for work. Sure looked empty. Very light truck traffic on the 710 heading home. Not much traffic going in on the 110. The teamsters I work with are talking about the drop off in work. Then hanging out in Seal Beach over the weekend. Only saw two oil tankers pull into El segundo. No container ships. Was this all just confirmation bias. Lord knows I am susceptible. So I found the port cameras. Nothing going on. But the maritime site…. Maybe I was missing something. Thank you Rayne. I don’t feel crazy anymore. My eyes are not lying. Going to buy some ETFs that short the market. I fear We are in for a rude awakening

    • Rayne says:

      Hey Bob — don’t let yourself be gaslighted! If you talk in any more detail with those Teamsters do let us know what they have to say about the container shipment volume.

      Hang in there!

  18. P J Evans says:

    Seen elseweb: speculation that The Felon Guy doesn’t understand *why* Congress has a Library. Apparently even some of the Rs are unhappy, because they (or their staffers) use it a lot, and they need a competent Librarian, not a bad lawyer who has no clue.

  19. The Old Redneck says:

    The Port of Seattle is empty now too. Usually, containers are stacked there like cordwood.

    • Rayne says:

      Thanks for sharing your observation. Any chance you can point to a photo from this month showing the lack of containers? I’d like to have a comparison with earlier photos like these below:

      Containers stacked at Port of Seattle, 06-AUG-2022 via Wikipedia
      Containers stacked at Port of Seattle, 06-AUG-2022 via Wikipedia

      Containers stacked at Port of Seattle, 21-MAR-2019 via Reuters
      Containers stacked at Port of Seattle, 21-MAR-2019 via Reuters

      Local reporting from 28-APR-2025 both-sided this:
      https://www.king5.com/article/news/verify/what-we-can-verify-about-port-of-seattle-ghost-town-rumors/281-4c678f85-0987-4929-a62d-8fc27ab397b3

      It’s a pretty good example of how scheduled arrivals distorts perception about freight as does the number of ships mooring but lightly loaded.

      What I’m not seeing in any reports are weights and numbers of containers. Nobody is sharing exact numbers and that’s the data compared from year to year indicating volume of activity.

      • Rayne says:

        Ope…found a photo from two weeks ago.

        NO containers stacked at Port of Seattle, approx. date 01-MAY-2025 via Grant Pearson on LinkedIn
        NO containers stacked at Port of Seattle, approx. date 01-MAY-2025 via Grant Pearson on LinkedIn

        Pearson wrote:

        The Port of Seattle yesterday. Empty. The last inbound vessels to the US West Coast from China end early May, with the East Coast soon after. A supply shock is on its way to consumers and businesses alike in around 4 weeks. Big harm on US exporters too looking for ships and transport. (See link in comments for precise numbers by port and flow on impact to transport).

        In his comments he shared another webcam photo from Port of Los Angeles two weeks ago showing the Evergreen berth empty, no vessels unloading containers.

        • xyxyxyxy says:

          All those gigantic cranes are made in China.
          So US is retaliating by making sure they are not being used.

  20. MsJennyMD says:

    Thank you Rayne. Wow – pictures say a thousand words. Also shows how the world’s dependent on one another for goods.

    Yesterday, I called Tuberville’s office after hearing his ignorant statement that the U.S. is “the grocery store of the world. You know, we make everything.” I reminded him living on planet Earth humans share varied cultures with one another. The Ancient Silk Road was vital in trade development, diverse cultures, perspective and environments linking East and West.

    I suggested he educate himself through travel because traveling is an enriching educational experience providing a new and different perspective about life. Pasta in Italy, beer in Germany, and paella in Spain are different flavors to be experienced in each country. I reminded him that education is a family value.

    • Rayne says:

      I dare you to call his office back and ask them to tell you how much fabric is made in the US.

      • e.a. foster says:

        How much fabric is still made in the U.S.A.? Not dam much. The sibling was a quilter from the 1980s on until 4 years ago. She dealt with one fabric store in Greater Vancouver, B.C. As time went by less and less fabric came in from the U.S.A. What did come in was much more expensive than the off shore fabric. The sibling continued to purchase American and European made fabrics. The amount of fabric she owned took up a room. When the sibling could no longer quilt she donated it. I kept some. Some are American made flannels and you don’t see that much any more. It is far superior to flannels from other countries. O.K. there are night shirts in flannel she made for me which are 30 years old. Still have one flannel shirt she made me, from American flannel.

        Thank you for posting the painting of the Rotterdam harbour. The parental units had paintings they purchased in the Netherlands of the old harbour, also a couple of prints.
        A news item on t.v. recently outlined the lack of traffic at the Long Beach Harbour. That was pretty sad. What ever was being imported won’t be there when stores need it and there will be some unhappy Americans.
        When we went through COVID, the thing which did dawn on me, WHAT IF THEY RUN OUT OF COFFEE? There are currently 20 bags of coffee beans in the house from South America, Africa, Sumatra, all nice organic and ethically grown, oh yes and Hawaian.

        B.C. has had a medical staffing shortage for some years as have other provinces. Given the number of Americans who have inquired into working here, B.C. has set up a fast track system to have nurses be able to be certified here with in a week. The news has reported they are processing 100 applications, currently. We will benefit, but really, its sad that some Americans are leaving their country because of the changes trump and his are making. At one level I know how this is happening and am not surprised at all, given what I saw in term one. On the other hand, its like I just can’t believe it is happening in the U.S.A. The programs trump and the republicans are cutting just boggles the mind. Oh, well on the other hand refugees from the U.S.A. have always benefited Canada. The first school built in B.C., was built by people escaping slavery prior to the Civil War. The school was built on Salt Spring Island and the people sustained themselves by farming. Second time it was people avoiding the draft and having to go to Vietnam. They became college instructors, specialists in childhood issues, hippies, artists, socialists. If we are to receive a third group, Canada will once again benefit. It is however very sad.

  21. Shredgar says:

    It’s a Sadopopulist administration:

    Sadopopulism is a political strategy in which leaders gain support by inflicting harm or pain on their own supporters, while convincing them that their suffering is justified because their perceived enemies are being hurt even more. The term was coined by historian Timothy Snyder.

  22. Magnet48 says:

    Daily I see more “news” that is shading everything in context of what the trump administration wants, normalizing its behavior & it seems to me portraying the behavior of anyone objecting as childish. It is a subtle & offensive maneuver, a shift meant to bend public opinion.

  23. P J Evans says:

    Port of L.A. webcams showed two ships going through this morning – I can’t tell which direction from stills – but both appeared to be less than fully loaded.

    • Rayne says:

      This one at about 6:30 am PT/9:30 am ET is inbound named Cape Sound, looks very, very lightly loaded:
      Archived webcam still from Port of Los Angeles-San Pedro about 0630h 14-MAY-2025 via EarthCam
      [Archived webcam still from Port of Los Angeles-San Pedro about 0630h 14-MAY-2025 via EarthCam]

      I can see a container vessel at the ONE terminal beyond the USS Iowa Museum; it’s been there quite a while, still looks rather loaded with containers but they don’t look heavy — like the freight is voluminous but not dense. There may be one more partial vessel at the next terminal but it could be this same Cape Sound vessel.

      Pretty damned slow for the largest US container port.

      • P J Evans says:

        Yeah, there should be a lot more. There were three tugs parked near the Iowa, when I looked.

        • Rayne says:

          You can see the same three tugs moving to/from their berth near the Iowa just before and after the Cape Sound. Not much else for them to do.

  24. P J Evans says:

    Apparently Gabbard has fired two intelligence officials who wouldn’t lie for The Felon Guy.
    https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/national-security/gabbard-fires-intel-officials-oversaw-memo-contradicting-white-house-c-rcna206918
    https://apnews.com/article/national-intelligence-council-gabbard-trump-cia-2bc7d2dab2ab067b276d6b8b31a5dea7
    Acting chair and his deputy. They supported the memo sayign that there wasn’t any coordination between the Venezuelan government and Tren del Aragua. Which isn’t what The Felon Guy and Miller want to hear.

  25. wa_rickf says:

    Another topic in this open thread mostly discussing shipping logistics, the GOP House Agriculture Committee is telling lobbyists they better get on board with $300B in nutrition spendings cuts, or they will receive none of the $60B left to divvy up.

    SNAP, Meals on Wheels, National School Lunch Program to be severely impacted.

    https://www.politico.com/live-updates/2025/05/14/congress/house-agriculture-committee-approves-300-billion-in-nutrition-spending-cuts-00350900

    Previous to my current job, I managed a NSL program for a couple of different school districts, having a bachelors in nutrition with a concentration in restaurant and institutional food service management.

    The NLSP had been making great strides in Child Nutrition since the 2010 Heathy Hunger-free Kids Act from the Obama Admin.

    What Trump and his ilk are doing to American society is grotesque.

  26. timbozone says:

    Thought provoking thread that got my mind trying to run some theoretical numbers… (not saying these are in any way real, just that they are ballpark guestimates based on the dubious numbers I find on the Internet, etc).

    Let’s say the value of cargo moving through US sea ports annually is in the ballpark of $4 trillion (US). And let’s say that shipping through those ports has been down 80% for the past two weeks.

    This gets us a loss in trade volume in dollar amount of approximately 2weeks/52 weeks per year * 4 trillion dollars per year * .8 lost trade of normal trade volume in a week,

    a theoretical loss in trade goods volume of approximately $120 billion over the two week period.

    Assuming these goods are worth a keynesian multiplier effect of approximately 4 that’s a loss of about $480 billion dollars from the US GDP. If the GDP is around 28 trillion dollars than that’s an economic hit for the year on the economy of around 1.5 percent.

    Spitballing conclusion: approximately half the US economy would be driven by the movement of cargo in and out of US sea ports. Every week of empty-ish ports would be another 0.5-1% hit on our economy…

    Anyone have better numbers, more likely accurate number on all this?

    • Rayne says:

      I don’t have better numbers but I also want to add that there’s no way to hedge *unless you’re in the circle of corruption with Trump’s White House.*

      Corporations the size of Walmart have to take currency positions to buy goods abroad; they have traders who hedge these positions. As erratic as this White House is, they must be struggling to stake out positions of safety where purchasing power remains stable.

      The only way to avoid exposure to the volatility is to buy into the corruption and ask for insider information in order to take positions. Those positions may not be aligned with the best interests of consumers let alone US citizens.

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