A report from last week showed that members of the National Economic Council and Port Envoy have been in discussions with members of the media to put a positive spin on the economic situation.
But, no amount of spin will alter reality. Despite indications that the line of ships waiting at the Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach was shrinking, it was only an artifact of the ports’ new queuing system.
The Marine Exchange of Southern California has updated its official count to reflect the new queuing system, and the backup stands at 95 ships as of December 10, which is near the record high.
The timeliness of transpacific ocean shipping, as estimated by Flexport, is at its worst ever. As of last week, it takes a container 106 days to be loaded onto a ship in Asia, cross the Pacific, and leave its destination port in the U.S. on some other mode of transportation. In 2019, the same procedure took roughly 45 days.
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These massive backups are not Joe Biden’s fault. As Scott Lincicome of the Cato Institute has written at length, “America’s ports problem is decades in the making.” And, of course, global trade involves other nations over which Biden has no control.
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Progressive ideology does not allow for the possibility that some things are out of the government’s command. So, Biden feels he has to do something. That’s where his go-to solution for everything comes in: government spending.
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He already has the $550 billion infrastructure bill, which the White House explained will “make the fundamental changes that are long overdue for our ports, airports, rail and roads to ensure that our supply chains are more resilient and efficient from future shocks.”
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Now, he wants the $1.75 trillion Build Back Better Act, which the White House says includes “targeted incentives to spur new domestic supply chains” and other “targeted investments” in “supply chain resilience.”
Supply chains do not suffer from a lack of federal spending. The federal government possesses nearly none of the assets involved in transporting goods. Most are privately owned and managed, and state and local governments overlook the public-sector portion. State and local governments are flush with cash between state aid in the American Rescue Plan Act and surging tax collections. California is set to run a $31 billion surplus this year. If money is the issue at southern California’s ports, the folks in Sacramento have plenty of money at their disposal.
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