Tens Of Billions Of Dollars Worth Of Cargo Lay Anchored Outside American Ports

Tens of billions of dollars worth of cargo lay anchored outside American ports

JD Heyes

The supply chain crisis brought on, in part, by Joe Biden’s abhorrent economic policies and his administration’s incompetence is getting worse, as a shipping industry website noted this week that tens of billions of dollars worth of cargo lay at anchor aboard dozens of ships waiting to be offloaded.

“There was fleeting hope that Southern California port congestion had turned the corner. The number of container ships waiting offshore dipped to the low 60s and high 50s from a record high of 73 on Sept. 19, trans-Pacific spot rates plateaued, the Biden administration unveiled aspirations for 24/7 port ops, and electricity shortages curbed Chinese factory output,” the Freighways website reported.

But in fact, the site notes further, the port congestion crisis that has been plaguing Southern California isn’t really improving at all.

The site notes that wait times for ships offshore are growing because there are too many vessels arriving daily and there are not enough resources to get cargo distributed in a timely manner. In fact, Freightways says that already, ports have far too much cargo for their terminals, trains, trucks and warehouses, as capacity has been stretched to the limit.

“The number of ships at anchor or in holding patterns is once again at record levels. According to the Marine Exchange of Southern California, 79 container ships were waiting off Los Angeles and Long Beach on Thursday, yet another all-time record,” the website reported, adding:

Marine Exchange data shows that ships waiting offshore on Thursday — including the 79 container ships as well as six additional cargo vessels carrying containers — had aggregate capacity of 597,250 twenty-foot equivalent units. To put that in perspective, that is 28% more than the Port of Los Angeles imported during the entire month of September and 70% of the combined Los Angles/Long Beach port complex’s September imports.

Assuming ships are at capacity, how much cargo value is out there in the “floating warehouse”? What’s in each box, and its value, varies dramatically — it can be worth a few thousand dollars or several hundred thousand dollars. But Port of Los Angeles stats provide a good guide.

In 2020, the website notes, the total customs values of all containerized imports at the Port of Los Angeles was a whopping $211.9 billion. If imports “totaled 4,827,040 TEUs, this equates to an average of $43,899 per import TEU. (Several other sources also estimated average cargo value at around $40,000 per TEU.),” the site added.

So, using these figures, the dollar amount of cargo currently at anchor off the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach is worth a cumulative $26.2 billion, or more than the annual GDP of Iceland and all of McDonalds’ revenues.

And it’s going to get worse.

“The Port of Los Angeles continues to struggle with the volume of cargo vessels arriving daily. More than 100 container ships are anchored around the port, many continuing to wait weeks for unloading with international crews restricted to their vessels,” the Forward Observer private intelligence service reported Friday.

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