~46~ Lame Duck Unfit Uncle Joe Biden ~46~

[youthathletics]

And???

Good leadership.

We have a number of mega threads here that blamed (and still blame) Drumpf for everything.

A year in, Biden needs to assume some of the responsibility for his "work."

What's he supposed to do about the issues detailed in the articles you cited? Federalize the ports?

We're in uncharted territory, my man. It's REALLY difficult to run a business just now. 1st world problems, I know, but.....

How about go on national TV and tell the US that he is holding a roundtable with these businesses and game plan our way out of it.

[kramerica.inc]

Why so much anger for even suggesting that the president has SOME responsibility?
I mean, we were told for 4 years that Trump and his mean tweets were the cause for everything bad in the US.
We're almost a year into Biden's term with control of the house and senate. Things should be looking up, no?
National guard was coming in to help at the ports, right? Is Pete giving it his full attention yet? Black Friday is coming.

[Typical Lax Dad]

Shortages everywhere. Rising prices.

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/supply-c ... 50733.html

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/la-long- ... 48353.html

Truckers and port workers want to work, Longshoremen, not working:

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/as-suppl ... 07621.html

And why is this posted on this thread, not the one about the economy?

You're not saying that the federal government should own and run all these sectors of private enterprise are you?

You're not suggesting that they should regulate more are you?

and calling on Biden?

We've had a massive disruption to our economy, with consumers now spending far more on hard goods than they did previously, and much less on services. The mix is very, very different from what these private supply chains were fine tuned to handle.

Private enterprise has optimized that fine tuning to maximize quarterly profitability, not extreme tail events like this.

Some of that is going to eventually shift back, some of that may persist.

Depends somewhat on Covid and our longer term changes in behavior. Really, really difficult to predict, much less fine tune for.

Here's a chart of lumber prices: https://tradingeconomics.com/commodity/lumber

crazy, crazy high last May, falling back to reasonable norms this summer until Delta began to scare everyone again...coming down again now.

But hey, the stock markets keep setting record highs...

So Biden has no responsibility in this.....that's your take?

Why have this...To improve the quality of life for all American people and communities, from rural to urban, and to increase the productivity and competitiveness of American workers and businesses. https://www.transportation.gov/

Why have this....The mission of the Department is to create the conditions for economic growth and opportunity: https://www.commerce.gov/

I have folks disrupted by the global supply chain. They are all managing it. You know who these management teams blame? Nobody.

Yea....ships backed up in US waterways is the new norm.

Whoever you are speaking with has not looked at their labor reports recently...unless they are just middle men. Labor burden is on the rise, companies staffed for their high and continued growing backlog, but margins are dropping significantly due to lack of product.

Boards and executive management teams are to blame-themselves.

I was told by one “middleman” last week that some of the material they need is stuck a container off the coast of LA but the impact will be immaterial….another mentioned its a 5% headwind that will be +/- 5 % of revenue or $30MM….. won’t be material and will continue to see sequential quarterly earnings growth and positive cash flow. Can’t endure forever but don’t expect the disruption to last forever.

[Farfromgeneva]

It’s just dumb at best and petty if less than the kindest view before even addressing the juvenile equivocating.

[Typical Lax Dad]

And???

Good leadership.

We have a number of mega threads here that blamed (and still blame) Drumpf for everything.

A year in, Biden needs to assume some of the responsibility for his "work."

What's he supposed to do about the issues detailed in the articles you cited? Federalize the ports?

We're in uncharted territory, my man. It's REALLY difficult to run a business just now. 1st world problems, I know, but.....

How about go on national TV and tell the US that he is holding a roundtable with these businesses and game plan our way out of it.

[youthathletics]

Shortages everywhere. Rising prices.

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/supply-c ... 50733.html

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/la-long- ... 48353.html

Truckers and port workers want to work, Longshoremen, not working:

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/as-suppl ... 07621.html

And why is this posted on this thread, not the one about the economy?

You're not saying that the federal government should own and run all these sectors of private enterprise are you?

You're not suggesting that they should regulate more are you?

and calling on Biden?

We've had a massive disruption to our economy, with consumers now spending far more on hard goods than they did previously, and much less on services. The mix is very, very different from what these private supply chains were fine tuned to handle.

Private enterprise has optimized that fine tuning to maximize quarterly profitability, not extreme tail events like this.

Some of that is going to eventually shift back, some of that may persist.

Depends somewhat on Covid and our longer term changes in behavior. Really, really difficult to predict, much less fine tune for.

Here's a chart of lumber prices: https://tradingeconomics.com/commodity/lumber

crazy, crazy high last May, falling back to reasonable norms this summer until Delta began to scare everyone again...coming down again now.

But hey, the stock markets keep setting record highs...

So Biden has no responsibility in this.....that's your take?

Why have this...To improve the quality of life for all American people and communities, from rural to urban, and to increase the productivity and competitiveness of American workers and businesses. https://www.transportation.gov/

Why have this....The mission of the Department is to create the conditions for economic growth and opportunity: https://www.commerce.gov/

I have folks disrupted by the global supply chain. They are all managing it. You know who these management teams blame? Nobody.

Yea....ships backed up in US waterways is the new norm.

Whoever you are speaking with has not looked at their labor reports recently...unless they are just middle men. Labor burden is on the rise, companies staffed for their high and continued growing backlog, but margins are dropping significantly due to lack of product.

Yeah, in the middle of the CEO and COO.

Exactly....the very ones that do not know what is going on until the monthly reports are served to them by those on the ground.

[Farfromgeneva]

Shortages everywhere. Rising prices.

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/supply-c ... 50733.html

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/la-long- ... 48353.html

Truckers and port workers want to work, Longshoremen, not working:

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/as-suppl ... 07621.html

And why is this posted on this thread, not the one about the economy?

You're not saying that the federal government should own and run all these sectors of private enterprise are you?

You're not suggesting that they should regulate more are you?

and calling on Biden?

We've had a massive disruption to our economy, with consumers now spending far more on hard goods than they did previously, and much less on services. The mix is very, very different from what these private supply chains were fine tuned to handle.

Private enterprise has optimized that fine tuning to maximize quarterly profitability, not extreme tail events like this.

Some of that is going to eventually shift back, some of that may persist.

Depends somewhat on Covid and our longer term changes in behavior. Really, really difficult to predict, much less fine tune for.

Here's a chart of lumber prices: https://tradingeconomics.com/commodity/lumber

crazy, crazy high last May, falling back to reasonable norms this summer until Delta began to scare everyone again...coming down again now.

But hey, the stock markets keep setting record highs...

So Biden has no responsibility in this.....that's your take?

Why have this...To improve the quality of life for all American people and communities, from rural to urban, and to increase the productivity and competitiveness of American workers and businesses. https://www.transportation.gov/

Why have this....The mission of the Department is to create the conditions for economic growth and opportunity: https://www.commerce.gov/

I have folks disrupted by the global supply chain. They are all managing it. You know who these management teams blame? Nobody.

Yea....ships backed up in US waterways is the new norm.

Whoever you are speaking with has not looked at their labor reports recently...unless they are just middle men. Labor burden is on the rise, companies staffed for their high and continued growing backlog, but margins are dropping significantly due to lack of product.

Boards and executive management teams are to blame-themselves.

I was told by one “middleman” last week that some of the material they need is stuck a container off the coast of LA but the impact will be immaterial….another mentioned its a 5% headwind that will be +/- 5 % of revenue or $30MM….. won’t be material and will continue to see sequential quarterly earnings growth and positive cash flow. Can’t endure forever but don’t expect the disruption to last forever.

It’s just the downside of just in time/reduction in slack and minimizing utilization. It worked until it didn’t. But we’re seeing labor wage growth which will enable price increases that should allow businesses to reshape the supply chain into something different (more expensive) in the future.

The self correcting mechanism of business without intervention.

[kramerica.inc]

Total US Covid Deaths on Jan. 20, 2021:

392,428

US Covid Death since Jan. 21 2021:

353,404

https://www.medicaleconomics.com/view/c ... 021-update

Things are looking up? Maybe?!

[a fan]

Yea....ships backed up in US waterways is the new norm.

Correction: the problem is only on the West port. All that junk coming from China that Trump was supposed to fix, remember?

What's your solution here? The entire importation system is private. Ships, Cranes, Short Term Storage, Trucks....it's all private, my man. Once my botanicals and the like arrive at customs? They're being processed at the same speed they always are. The government isn't the problem.

Or would you prefer that we Federalize the system?


There's a backlog on a global level for EVERYTHING. Parts, chips, raw materials, the whole deal my man. This isn't a Biden problem. I've been dealing with it personally since Covid started. And if you recall? I sure as *hit didn't blame Trump for the problem.

[youthathletics]

Yea....ships backed up in US waterways is the new norm.

Correction: the problem is only on the West port. All that junk coming from China that Trump was supposed to fix, remember?

What's your solution here? The entire importation system is private. Ships, Cranes, Short Term Storage, Trucks....it's all private, my man. Once my botanicals and the like arrive at customs? They're being processed at the same speed they always are. The government isn't the problem.

Or would you prefer that we Federalize the system?


There's a backlog on a global level for EVERYTHING. Parts, chips, raw materials, the whole deal my man. This isn't a Biden problem. I've been dealing with it personally since Covid started. And if you recall? I sure as *hit didn't blame Trump for the problem.

Of course not federalize.....as I already stated, we have a DoT and DoC, Biden or Harris could easily call in the Port authorizes heads and Trucking leaders to work together.....maybe they are waiting for Pete to get off Paternity leave.

[a fan]

Why so much anger for even suggesting that the president has SOME responsibility?

Because you guys "forgot" to blame Trump for the exact same global supply chain problems, and it's a bit much to come on here and throw stones at the new guy because he's got a different letter by his name.

If I thought customs was the problem? I'd let Biden have it, no problem there.

But that's not the problem. So really---what's Biden supposed to do?

I mean, we were told for 4 years that Trump and his mean tweets were the cause for everything bad in the US.

No, actually, we gave you very specific complaints about very specific polices, and very specific conflicts of interest.

Want me to pull up the old posts I made, and bore you to tears? I'd just as soon let it go, but if you want to do that, I'm game, I guess.

We're almost a year into Biden's term with control of the house and senate. Things should be looking up, no?

They are. Unemployment is dropping, the markets are at record highs.....all the fake Trump metrics look swell.

Or have you finally changed your focus to flyover America and TrumpLand now that Trump has left office? Yep, they're getting screwed by inflation. But who cares about them, remember? So long as the market is great, and corporate taxes are low? Everything's fine.

[youthathletics]

Shortages everywhere. Rising prices.

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/supply-c ... 50733.html

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/la-long- ... 48353.html

Truckers and port workers want to work, Longshoremen, not working:

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/as-suppl ... 07621.html

And why is this posted on this thread, not the one about the economy?

You're not saying that the federal government should own and run all these sectors of private enterprise are you?

You're not suggesting that they should regulate more are you?

and calling on Biden?

We've had a massive disruption to our economy, with consumers now spending far more on hard goods than they did previously, and much less on services. The mix is very, very different from what these private supply chains were fine tuned to handle.

Private enterprise has optimized that fine tuning to maximize quarterly profitability, not extreme tail events like this.

Some of that is going to eventually shift back, some of that may persist.

Depends somewhat on Covid and our longer term changes in behavior. Really, really difficult to predict, much less fine tune for.

Here's a chart of lumber prices: https://tradingeconomics.com/commodity/lumber

crazy, crazy high last May, falling back to reasonable norms this summer until Delta began to scare everyone again...coming down again now.

But hey, the stock markets keep setting record highs...

So Biden has no responsibility in this.....that's your take?

Why have this...To improve the quality of life for all American people and communities, from rural to urban, and to increase the productivity and competitiveness of American workers and businesses. https://www.transportation.gov/

Why have this....The mission of the Department is to create the conditions for economic growth and opportunity: https://www.commerce.gov/

I have folks disrupted by the global supply chain. They are all managing it. You know who these management teams blame? Nobody.

Yea....ships backed up in US waterways is the new norm.

Whoever you are speaking with has not looked at their labor reports recently...unless they are just middle men. Labor burden is on the rise, companies staffed for their high and continued growing backlog, but margins are dropping significantly due to lack of product.

Boards and executive management teams are to blame-themselves.

I was told by one “middleman” last week that some of the material they need is stuck a container off the coast of LA but the impact will be immaterial….another mentioned its a 5% headwind that will be +/- 5 % of revenue or $30MM….. won’t be material and will continue to see sequential quarterly earnings growth and positive cash flow. Can’t endure forever but don’t expect the disruption to last forever.

It’s just the downside of just in time/reduction in slack and minimizing utilization. It worked until it didn’t. But we’re seeing labor wage growth which will enable price increases that should allow businesses to reshape the supply chain into something different (more expensive) in the future.

The self correcting mechanism of business without intervention.

.....as noted here. https://www.corvetteblogger.com/2021/10 ... VmpAqDuylo

Its rather easy to lay off assembly line workers, then ramp back up. Not so much for skilled labor, specialists, tradesmen, etc.

[a fan]

Of course not federalize.....as I already stated, we have a DoT and DoC, Biden or Harris could easily call in the Port authorizes heads and Trucking leaders to work together.....maybe they are waiting for Pete to get off Paternity leave.

Well, to quote the movie True Romance......"Hey boss? Get ready to be happy......"

The President launched the Supply Chain Disruptions Task Force in June, which included a focus on transportation and logistics bottlenecks to the U.S. economic recovery. After meeting with local government leaders and companies to diagnose the problems and identify solutions, Port Envoy John Porcari was appointed in August to help drive coordination between the many private firms who control the transportation and logistics supply chain.

Today, the Administration is convening business leaders, port leaders, and union leaders to discuss the challenges at ports across the country and actions each partner can take to address the delays and congestion across the transportation supply chain. And the President will meet with the leadership from the Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach and the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) to discuss the actions they are each taking to address these challenges in Southern California.




https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-roo ... -to-shelf/

[dislaxxic]

Total US Covid Deaths on Jan. 20, 2021:

392,428

US Covid Death since Jan. 21 2021:

353,404

https://www.medicaleconomics.com/view/c ... 021-update

Things are looking up? Maybe?!

How many of the 123,820 "hospitalized patients" on January 21, 2021 actually died, Kram?

Stats being dishonestly manipulated much? Maybe?! Let's ax Debra Birx...she was THERE!

..

[Farfromgeneva]

Shortages everywhere. Rising prices.

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/supply-c ... 50733.html

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/la-long- ... 48353.html

Truckers and port workers want to work, Longshoremen, not working:

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/as-suppl ... 07621.html

And why is this posted on this thread, not the one about the economy?

You're not saying that the federal government should own and run all these sectors of private enterprise are you?

You're not suggesting that they should regulate more are you?

and calling on Biden?

We've had a massive disruption to our economy, with consumers now spending far more on hard goods than they did previously, and much less on services. The mix is very, very different from what these private supply chains were fine tuned to handle.

Private enterprise has optimized that fine tuning to maximize quarterly profitability, not extreme tail events like this.

Some of that is going to eventually shift back, some of that may persist.

Depends somewhat on Covid and our longer term changes in behavior. Really, really difficult to predict, much less fine tune for.

Here's a chart of lumber prices: https://tradingeconomics.com/commodity/lumber

crazy, crazy high last May, falling back to reasonable norms this summer until Delta began to scare everyone again...coming down again now.

But hey, the stock markets keep setting record highs...

So Biden has no responsibility in this.....that's your take?

Why have this...To improve the quality of life for all American people and communities, from rural to urban, and to increase the productivity and competitiveness of American workers and businesses. https://www.transportation.gov/

Why have this....The mission of the Department is to create the conditions for economic growth and opportunity: https://www.commerce.gov/

I have folks disrupted by the global supply chain. They are all managing it. You know who these management teams blame? Nobody.

Yea....ships backed up in US waterways is the new norm.

Whoever you are speaking with has not looked at their labor reports recently...unless they are just middle men. Labor burden is on the rise, companies staffed for their high and continued growing backlog, but margins are dropping significantly due to lack of product.

Boards and executive management teams are to blame-themselves.

I was told by one “middleman” last week that some of the material they need is stuck a container off the coast of LA but the impact will be immaterial….another mentioned its a 5% headwind that will be +/- 5 % of revenue or $30MM….. won’t be material and will continue to see sequential quarterly earnings growth and positive cash flow. Can’t endure forever but don’t expect the disruption to last forever.

It’s just the downside of just in time/reduction in slack and minimizing utilization. It worked until it didn’t. But we’re seeing labor wage growth which will enable price increases that should allow businesses to reshape the supply chain into something different (more expensive) in the future.

The self correcting mechanism of business without intervention.

.....as noted here. https://www.corvetteblogger.com/2021/10 ... VmpAqDuylo

Its rather easy to lay off assembly line workers, then ramp back up. Not so much for skilled labor, specialists, tradesmen, etc.

That’s why you can’t run capacity utilization to 90-95% but it was modeled differently by a management class since Jack Welch was deified. Our fear of Japan in the 80s was built on a lie and scam of cross holdings. Read a book on the decline of Long Term Credit Bank or any case study of Komatsu the industrial conglomerate. We got sucked in and started intervening believing govt could handle things they can’t because of said lie and catering to populist selfish instincts of citizens

[Farfromgeneva]

Total US Covid Deaths on Jan. 20, 2021:

392,428

US Covid Death since Jan. 21 2021:

353,404

https://www.medicaleconomics.com/view/c ... 021-update

Things are looking up? Maybe?!

How many of the 123,820 "hospitalized patients" on January 21, 2021 actually died, Kram?

Stats being dishonestly manipulated much? Maybe?! Let's ax Debra Birx...she was THERE!

..

Right ignoring a time lag is either really bad math my son wouldn’t mistake or dishonest. And it’s funny from the former journalist complaining about the current bias of journalists.

[Typical Lax Dad]

And???

Good leadership.

We have a number of mega threads here that blamed (and still blame) Drumpf for everything.

A year in, Biden needs to assume some of the responsibility for his "work."

What's he supposed to do about the issues detailed in the articles you cited? Federalize the ports?

We're in uncharted territory, my man. It's REALLY difficult to run a business just now. 1st world problems, I know, but.....

How about go on national TV and tell the US that he is holding a roundtable with these businesses and game plan our way out of it.

[MDlaxfan76]

I think this really could be an interesting discussion if it wasn't for the rather obvious, and quite dense, political finger pointing.

We have a private enterprise system, not a "5 year year plan" govt' controlled production and distribution system.

Unless that's what you want?

We have had a global shock unlike anything experienced in any of our memories.

It's resulted in massive shifts in demand, globally, away from services...and towards goods that need to be produced and distributed at a scale never previously attempted...all at once.

And the prior system was fine-tuned by competitive forces and quarterly profit focus to achieve lowest cost position at each price point level.

It was not designed to be resilient to massive, global supply and demand disruptions.

None of that can be sufficiently mitigated by 'meetings' and 'plans' though certainly they are worthwhile attempts to achieve greater coordination and cooperation for the greater good in a time of high stress.

None of this challenge was caused by Biden. While one might say that it would not have been as bad had Trump handled the response to the virus differently from the outset and during his tenure, the reality is that this is a global shock, not simply a national one. Trump's errors IMO have only marginal impact on this current issue.

That said, the stress Trump put on the international trade system with the various tariffs, withdrawal from international trade and other accords, and the "nationalism" "America First" rhetoric was not a good foundation for international cooperation, at least not with US leadership. Whether Biden can eventually heal the loss of confidence in the US or not remains to be seen, but it won't be overnight, as the chief takeaway other countries have now is that in every 4 year cycle they may face someone as off the rails as Trump.

But I think all that has only marginal impact on the current challenge...because it's such a large, global problem, not of any country or counties' making or in any country's control.

I do think we're going to see major companies increasingly consider resilience under stress to be a higher priority and that will likely mean more on-shore manufacturing, at least to some extent, but as the world eventually stabilizes I think we'll continue to see fine-tuning to optimize lowest cost, whatever accomplishes that objective...now.

I think the on-shoring of chip production is a really, really good idea and if it needs to be supported by federal incentives, so be it.

Similarly, I think we should be re-thinking our education system and workforce training to better achieve the skilled labor levels necessary to flex to whatever demands are most likely to be needed.

And I think we should be re-thinking how we get women as productively employed as we can, as soon as we can.

In other words, lots of what the Biden agenda is at least trying to do. Quibble at the edges, argue it should be more (or less) but directionally it's positive.

[CU88]

You can tell who watches Faux News and regurgates their bs; even after one of their own calls out his bs...

Opinion: Rick Scott’s phony problem-solving

By James Downie
Digital opinions editor
Yesterday at 5:55 p.m. EDT

When politicians are asked why they wanted to run for office, the answer invariably involves some version of “I wanted to help people.” It’s a cliche for a reason: The whole point of public service is to solve policy problems. Unless, that is, you’re a Republican politician in 2021.

At least, that’s the takeaway from Sen. Rick Scott’s interview on “Fox News Sunday.” After Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg discussed backups at the nation’s ports, host Chris Wallace welcomed the Florida Republican and asked for his thoughts. Scott had a novel idea: “If the secretary of transportation wanted to solve the — the port issue, you’d fly out to the port, you’d sit down with everybody and find out what the problem is and then you go solve it.”

Gee, why didn’t the White House think of that? Who knew that solving a problem was as simple as just solving it?

But tautologies were all Scott had to offer, because he clearly hadn’t given much thought to whatever the problem was. “Typically, the problem is caused by some government regulation or some government red tape,” he suggested, not even bothering to pretend he has researched this issue enough even for a brief television interview. To pick just one nongovernment reason for the bottlenecks: The trucker shortages around the country are due to the industry’s squeeze on unions and (until recently) such low pay that the industry has struggled to replace retiring drivers, and the many independent contractors who might otherwise pick up the work aren’t compensated while waiting for hours for cargo to unload.

Furthermore, as Wallace pointed out, Scott’s “just solve it” mantra doesn’t match his voting record. “More than 3,500 miles of Florida highways are in poor condition. You voted against $13 billion to repair them,” he told Scott. “You also voted against money in the infrastructure bill to help your home state of Florida to deal with extreme weather, which you have plenty of in Florida.”

Scott’s excuse? First, that it wasn’t really an infrastructure bill — which would be news to his 19 Republican colleagues who backed the bill. But more importantly, argued Scott, he was concerned about the national debt. “You put a bill in front of me that’s going to be roads, bridges, airports and seaports, paid for, I’m very interested in doing something like that. But I am not going to bankrupt this country. This country has almost $30 trillion worth of debt. That bill by itself was a quarter of a trillion dollars of debt.”

If the debt’s such a problem, asked Wallace, shouldn’t the Trump tax cuts be repealed? After all, to use Scott’s phrasing, those tax cuts represent $2 trillion of debt. No, argued Scott: “I am not raising anybody’s taxes. I want lower taxes. I want to watch how we spend our money.”

First, it’s bold for someone who got rich overseeing massive Medicare fraud to complain about how the government spends its money. Second, the debt is such a big issue that Scott had no choice but to oppose fixing thousands of miles of his home state’s highways — but not so big a problem to prevent him from supporting millions of dollars in tax cuts to the wealthiest Americans? And how do we solve infrastructure spending if the money has to come from other vital programs? That’s your problem, according to Scott.

That Scott would deploy the phony mantra of “just solve it” is no surprise. This is the same person who, as governor of Florida during Hurricane Irma, gave out his cellphone number to nursing homes and promised to help them. But when a Broward County nursing home called him after losing power, staff at the residence say Scott never returned their calls. After 12 residents died, the governor’s office blamed the nursing home — and deleted the voice mails left by the home’s staff on Scott’s cellphone.

And it’s also no surprise that someone like Scott would nevertheless rise to lead the GOP’s Senate campaign arm. Among the party’s chief credos, after all, is the old Ronald Reagan quote: “Government is not the solution to our problem. Government is the problem.” It’s a quote as pithy as it is obtuse — a nice sound bite that does nothing but hamper solving actual problems. In other words, it’s a perfect slogan for the modern Republican Party.

[youthathletics]

I think this really could be an interesting discussion if it wasn't for the rather obvious, and quite dense, political finger pointing.

We have a private enterprise system, not a "5 year year plan" govt' controlled production and distribution system.

Unless that's what you want?

We have had a global shock unlike anything experienced in any of our memories.

It's resulted in massive shifts in demand, globally, away from services...and towards goods that need to be produced and distributed at a scale never previously attempted...all at once.

And the prior system was fine-tuned by competitive forces and quarterly profit focus to achieve lowest cost position at each price point level.

It was not designed to be resilient to massive, global supply and demand disruptions.

None of that can be sufficiently mitigated by 'meetings' and 'plans' though certainly they are worthwhile attempts to achieve greater coordination and cooperation for the greater good in a time of high stress.

None of this challenge was caused by Biden. While one might say that it would not have been as bad had Trump handled the response to the virus differently from the outset and during his tenure, the reality is that this is a global shock, not simply a national one. Trump's errors IMO have only marginal impact on this current issue.

That said, the stress Trump put on the international trade system with the various tariffs, withdrawal from international trade and other accords, and the "nationalism" "America First" rhetoric was not a good foundation for international cooperation, at least not with US leadership. Whether Biden can eventually heal the loss of confidence in the US or not remains to be seen, but it won't be overnight, as the chief takeaway other countries have now is that in every 4 year cycle they may face someone as off the rails as Trump.

But I think all that has only marginal impact on the current challenge...because it's such a large, global problem, not of any country or counties' making or in any country's control.

I do think we're going to see major companies increasingly consider resilience under stress to be a higher priority and that will likely mean more on-shore manufacturing, at least to some extent, but as the world eventually stabilizes I think we'll continue to see fine-tuning to optimize lowest cost, whatever accomplishes that objective...now.

I think the on-shoring of chip production is a really, really good idea and if it needs to be supported by federal incentives, so be it.

Similarly, I think we should be re-thinking our education system and workforce training to better achieve the skilled labor levels necessary to flex to whatever demands are most likely to be needed.

Everything you list is fine and dandy.....most all of us would agree. As I noted earlier this month....I flew in to BWI early October, the chessy bay was backed up bigtime, I can also look our my car window and see the extra traffic when I cross the chessy bridge regularly.

If team Biden had a meeting with these folks back in July, and as afan noted......worked on this as recently as mid October with no mention of using Florida or Baltimore, why did ships just start using Florida after DeSantis recommended it? Was that short sightedness, intentional to not redirect ships to the east coast?