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U.S. Port Strike Would Spark Supply Chain Problems from the Outset, CMA CGM Warns

By Lisa Baertlein September 18, 2024

LOS ANGELES, Sept 18 (Reuters) – A threatened Oct. 1 strike by dockworkers at ports on the U.S. East Coast and Gulf of Mexico would immediately disrupt the flow of goods in the country, the North America chief executive of French container carrier CMA CGM said on Wednesday.

The International Longshoremen’s Association union represents 45,000 workers at 36 ports including New York/New Jersey, Houston and Savannah, Georgia. The union has vowed to stop work if it does not have a new labor agreement in place when the current six-year contract expires on Sept. 30 at midnight.

“The moment you close the door, things begin to back up,” George Goldman, CMA CGM’s North America chief, said on a webcast hosted by the Port of Los Angeles.

“One day is too long” for port closures, he said.

CMA CGM is a member of the United States Maritime Alliance employer group that is negotiating with the ILA.

The ports that stand to be affected handle about half of U.S. imports. Worried retailers, manufacturers and other ocean shippers have been shifting some cargo to the West Coast to cut the chance of having cargo stuck at idled facilities.

Analysts at Sea-Intelligence, a Copenhagen-based shipping advisory firm, estimate it could take anywhere from four to six days to clear the backlog from a one-day strike.

A two-week strike could mean that ports would not return to normal operations until 2025, Sea-Intelligence said.

Goods from Europe, India and other countries that rely on direct routes across the Atlantic Ocean would be most heavily affected, transportation experts said.

Meanwhile, imports to the busiest U.S. West Coast ports are surging.

That is because customers of CMA CGM, Maersk and other large container carriers also have been rushing in stocks of Halloween costumes and Christmas apparel before any potential labor action. At the same time, manufacturers have been loading up on solar panels and other goods targeted for potential tariff increases.

The Port of Long Beach in August notched the busiest month in its 113-year history, with volume jumping nearly 34% from the year earlier, bolstered by a 40% surge in imports.

The neighboring Port of Los Angeles reported an August volume jump of 16%, fueled by a nearly 18% jump in imports.

Gene Seroka, executive director for the Port of Los Angeles, said the bump from cargo shifts from other ports is hard to quantify. Still, he said Los Angeles can handle about 1.2 million 20-foot equivalent units per month, versus the 960,597 TEU processed in August.

“We can handle this cargo,” Seroka said.

https://gcaptain.com/u-s-port-strike-supply-chain-problems/

>>21620168

You are quite a buzzkill

Imagine her friends have found their way here

Imagine they have read things anons have posted

Imagine they gave qresear.ch a whirl and saw all the accumulated stuff

>>21620169

I was hoping for a trading card series

US Strategy for Anti-Ship Weapons to Counter China: Plentiful, Mobile, Deadly

Reporting by Gerry Doyle in Singapore and Mike Stone in Washington Reuters September 17, 2024

SINGAPORE, Sept 17 (Reuters) – The United States is amassing an arsenal of abundant and easily made anti-ship weapons as part of American efforts to deter China in the Indo-Pacific region and gear up U.S. forces there.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has pushed U.S. thinking toward a new philosophy – “affordable mass,” as one missile industry CEO put it, speaking on condition of anonymity, referring to having plenty of relatively cheap weapons at the ready.

“It’s a natural counter to what China has been doing,” said Euan Graham, a senior analyst with the Australian Strategic Policy Institute think tank, referring to the Chinese arsenal of ships and conventional ballistic missiles including those designed to attack vessels.

The Pentagon and China’s Ministry of Defence did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

The United States has ramped up testing of its QUICKSINK weapon, an inexpensive and potentially plentiful bomb equipped with a low-cost GPS guidance kit and a seeker that can track moving objects. The U.S. Air Force used a B-2 stealth bomber during a test last month in the Gulf of Mexico to strike a target ship with QUICKSINK.

China will still have a large advantage in sheer numbers of anti-ship missiles, according to experts, and can base them on its home territory. But increasing U.S. production of QUICKSINK would narrow that gap by putting China’s 370 or so warships at more risk during any future conflict than they have faced since before Beijing leaned into modernizing its military in the 1990s.

QUICKSINK, still in development, is made by Boeing, with a seeker from BAE Systems. QUICKSINK can be used with the hundreds of thousands of Joint-Direct Attack Munition tail kits – systems that can be dropped from U.S. or allied warplanes and cheaply turn “dumb” 2,000-pound (900-kg) bombs into guided weapons.

The U.S. military’s Indo-Pacific Command wants thousands of the QUICKSINK weapons – and has for years – according to an industry executive, who declined to reveal the precise figure because it is classified.

With enough “affordable mass” weapons aimed at them, Chinese ship defenses would be overwhelmed, according to this executive, speaking on condition of anonymity.

In such a scenario, the U.S. military would use Long Range Anti-Ship Missiles (LRASM) or SM-6 missiles to damage a Chinese warship and its radars, then bombard the vessel with lower-cost weapons such as QUICKSINK.

A VARIETY OF WEAPONS

The United States has been amassing a variety of anti-ship weapons in Asia. In April, the U.S. Army deployed its new Typhon mobile missile batteries, which were developed cheaply from existing components and can fire SM-6 and Tomahawk missiles against sea targets, to the Philippines during an exercise.

Such weapons are relatively easy to produce – drawing on large stockpiles and designs that have been around for a decade or more – and could help the United States and its allies catch up quickly in an Indo-Pacific missile race in which China has a big lead.

Although the U.S. military has declined to say how many will be deployed in the Indo-Pacific region, more than 800 SM-6 missiles are due to be bought in the next five years, according to government documents outlining military purchases. Several thousand Tomahawks and hundreds of thousands of JDAMs are already in U.S. inventories, the documents showed.

“China’s game is to restrict the movement of U.S. Navy assets in the Western Pacific and First Island Chain,” Graham said, referring to the closest major archipelagos from the coast of East Asia. “This is a sort of like-minded response to make life difficult for the PLAN.”

PLAN is short for the People’s Liberation Army Navy, China’s maritime service branch.

Placing anti-ship weapons in locations such as the Philippines would put them within reach of much of the South China Sea. China claims 90% of the South China Sea as its sovereign territory, but is opposed by five Southeast Asian states and Taiwan.

Collin Koh, a scholar at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies in Singapore, said, “In a way it is like leveling the playing field.”

Koh cited the example of Iran-aligned Houthi forces using low-tech anti-ship weapons against civilian traffic in the Red Sea, which forced the United States and others to deploy costly weapons to defend against them.

“If you look at the case of the Red Sea, clearly the cost equation (of anti-ship missiles) doesn’t fall on the side of the defender,” Koh said. “Even if you have a smaller arsenal of such offensive missile systems, you can still project some deterrence.”

https://gcaptain.com/us-strategy-for-anti-ship-weapons-to-counter-china-plentiful-mobile-deadly/

I was most displeased to see the "is made by Boeing" part

>>21620210

There's that nice feature of clicking an ID to highlight all the posts that ID has made in a bread

I SEE YOU