President Biden announced yesterday that the Port of Los Angeles and the Port of Long Beach agreed to operate 24/7 in an attempt to clear out the backlog of ships waiting to unload cargo. It’s a good move, as far as it goes, and the President deserves credit.
But. It’s a short-term fix. If we should have learned anything during the pandemic, it’s that the global supply chain leaves everyone seriously vulnerable to any sort of hiccup. It’s not just toys for Christmas (who can blame Biden for not wanting to appear to be the Grinch That Stole Christmas?) but also paper for beer and wine labels, aluminum, ingredients for medicine, chips for cellphones, cars and computers, etc.
The production of those items for the United States needs to be brought back to the U.S., or at least to North and Central America. And Federal policymakers need to figure out how to encourage that. At the same time, our companies need to be encouraged to locate manufacturing plants to supply Africa in Africa, to supply India in India, etc.
It may be a global market, but that doesn’t change the value of making goods close to where you’re going to sell them. Our opinion.