One of the Marketplace radio programs on NPR interviewed one of the lead managers at the Port of Long Beach within the last day or two, he laid into what he sees as the misguided trade policies of the current administration (which considering his job is primarily in imports is understandable) which had already cut way into port business, then this virus has caused volume to fall off a cliff. They are still getting ship traffic through the port, but only a fraction of what they should be seeing. As a result empty containers are piling up in ports because the ships aren't there to carry them away. Agricultural exports are also piling up for lack of ships as well. I saw or read some statistic someplace a week or so ago saying that about 350,000 containers have been removed from global circulation, and a lot has happened since then.

Reports seem to be that a lot of the Chinese factories are coming back into production, but quarantines and travel restrictions are preventing a lot of their products from getting to their export ports, and a lot of their port employees were having trouble getting back to their job sites. The same program interviewed a logistics company manager a week or two ago, she said the only remaining unaffected shipping route out of China was rail to Russia.

Jeff Moore
Elko, NV