What will be the economic effect of long COVID? - opinion

• Author: SHERWIN POMERANTZ
• Published date: 07 October 2021
• Publication title: Jerusalem Post, The: Web Edition Articles (Israel)

Worldwide we are seeing prices of all the items we need and use every day rising rapidly. And that's the good news. However, in addition to price increases, there are also shortages of everything from computer chips, automobiles, furniture, appliances and now, even diapers. Why?

One example can be seen on the west coast of the United States where today, there are 76 container ships sitting up to 40 miles offshore waiting to be unloaded because there is limited room at the ports of Long Beach and Los Angeles. Those two ports combined make up the busiest seaport in the world. Some of those ships will wait up to three weeks before they are given permission to enter the harbor and unload. Estimates are that it will be mid-2022 before the full backlog is eliminated.

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However, the number itself is also representative of an incredible volume of shipped goods. On average, each container ship carries 14,000 containers. Statistics provided by NBC News this week indicated that each container represents about $100,000 worth of products. Do the math and each of those 76 ships sitting off the coast of California carries about $1.4 billion worth of merchandise. Together the total value of merchandise sitting off the west coast is $106.4b. And that's just those two ports. The situation is replicated in New York, Newport News (Virginia), Savannah (Georgia), Miami, New Orleans and Houston, as well as in international ports worldwide. The lack of port capacity and the shortage of port personnel is the major contributing factor to this calamity.

The situation is further exacerbated by the fact that there is also a shortage of trailer truck drivers worldwide, which then limits how many containers can be off-loaded on any given day. After all, once the containers are off-loaded, they then have to be taken somewhere.

Finally, this entire scenario has created a world shortage of containers. Manufacturers need empty containers at their loading docks in order to ship their products out to the world. If ships are taking three weeks to unload instead of three days, the exporter...