Zero­Hedge News

• Flood­ing In West China Destroys Agri­cul­tural Pro­duc­tion
  Flood­ing In West China Destroys Agri­cul­tural Pro­duc­tion

  Authored by Alex Wu via The Epoch Times,

  Con­tin­u­ous rain­fall for more than ten days has caused the lower reaches of the Luo River in China’s west to spill their banks. Large vol­umes of flood­wa­ter released from upstream have destroyed two dams in one county, and vil­lages are flooded. Local jujube grow­ers and those in ani­mal hus­bandry have suf­fered seri­ous losses.

  The autumn har­vest is at a severe loss in Dali County of Weinan city, Shaanxi Province, where 108 vil­lages have been affected by floods.

  Accord­ing to local media reports, Dali County has expe­ri­enced heavy rains this fall. Water lev­els in the Wei River and Luo River run­ning across the province have exceeded their warn­ing lev­els, with some areas expe­ri­enc­ing seri­ous floods.

  In Dali’s Zhaodu town, about 29,000 acres of farm­land were flooded, and 25,126 peo­ple had to be urgently evacuated.

  As to the rea­son for the flood­ing, some locals have voiced sus­pi­cion that it’s caused by the local author­i­ties inten­tional release of flood­wa­ters to pro­tect other areas.

  Xin Ming (alias), a vil­lager in Xinsi vil­lage, Zhaodu town, told the Chinese-​language Epoch Times that he believes that in order to pro­tect Gansu Province and Henan Province, the author­i­ties quickly released a large vol­ume of water into the Dali area, burst­ing local river banks.

  “The vil­lage was com­pletely sub­merged, about two meters (6.6 feet) deep, and the houses and fur­ni­ture were all immersed in the water,” he said.

  Posts on social media by other local vil­lagers in the disaster-​stricken areas, across Zhaodu and Dali County, also said, “In order to pro­tect Gansu Province in the upper stream, and Henan Province in the lower stream, [author­i­ties in] Shaanxi Province opened their own gates for two flood releases. The flood passed through Dali, and the dam broke.”

  The Epoch Times could not ver­ify this infor­ma­tion. After con­tact­ing the Flood Con­trol Com­mand of Dali County, and a staff mem­ber said that they did not release flood­wa­ters at this time.

  At 6 a.m. on Oct. 9, vil­lagers sud­denly received a notice from town­ship offi­cials order­ing them to evac­u­ate immediately.

  Xue Fei (alias), an ani­mal hus­bandry farmer in Zhaodu, told The Epoch Times, “The water is ris­ing rapidly, and the time for peo­ple to evac­u­ate was very short, in a rush. Cows and pigs were killed by the flood, and the farm­ers have suf­fered par­tic­u­larly great losses.”

  Dali County is known for its jujube plan­ta­tions. It has been rec­og­nized by the cen­tral author­i­ties for its high-​quality agri­cul­tural prod­ucts, like the famous “Dali Jujube.” Most local vil­lagers grow jujube to sup­port their liveli­hoods. It’s har­vest sea­son now, but the floods have ruined this year’s crop.

  “Dali County’s win­ter jujube is the most deli­cious in the coun­try and has the most out­put,”Xin said.

  “The win­ter jujube in the field is almost com­pletely sub­merged, and the green­houses are also com­pletely submerged.”

  Xin’s 5-​acre plan­ta­tion of jujube trees was all destroyed after being soaked in floodwater.

  The Epoch Times has obtained a video show­ing the flood­ing in Dali County.

  After the flood­ing dis­as­ter, non-​government relief mate­ri­als were sent to the area in batches. But after the local gov­ern­ment took over con­trol of the dis­tri­b­u­tion of aid, no aid has been reach­ing vil­lagers out­side the big towns.

  The weather has been get­ting cold, Xin said. “We are short of quilts, cotton-​padded clothes, and daily neces­si­ties, and the vil­lagers do not even have enough shirts and pants.”

  Tyler Dur­den Fri, 10/​15/​2021 — 19:50
• “It Was Just A Big Poker Game”: Michael Dell Talks Deal­ing With Carl Icahn, Semi Short­age, In New Inter­view
  “It Was Just A Big Poker Game”: Michael Dell Talks Deal­ing With Carl Icahn, Semi Short­age, In New Inter­view

  Among what are likely pages of overused bor­ing busi­ness anec­dotes, Michael Dell’s new book, “Play Nice But Win: A CEO’s Jour­ney From Founder to Leader”, also includes an inter­est­ing look at doing busi­ness with Carl Icahn.

  Dell recently sat down with Bloomberg for an inter­view and revealed some of the book’s details, as well as his take on cur­rent events in the semi­con­duc­tor indus­try, which has been expe­ri­enc­ing a year long shortage..

  Speak­ing about when Carl Icahn took a stake in Dell and tried to pre­vent the com­pany from going pub­lic, Dell said: “I didn’t really have much expe­ri­ence deal­ing with some­one who would just go on tele­vi­sion and lie.”

  He claimed that after con­fronting Icahn, he found out that the “activist” didn’t even have a plan for the company.

  Dell said: “I did go to his house and con­front him, and I saw he didn’t have any plan what­so­ever for the com­pany. To him it was just a big poker game.”

  In other news, Dell believes that the semi­con­duc­tor short­age could wind up persisting.

  “It takes about three years to build a new semi­con­duc­tor plant. We’re only 18 months into this,” he told Bloomberg. “We’ve heard from our cus­tomers that our sup­ply chain is func­tion­ing well. They may not like the lead time, but it’s pre­dictable and reliable.”

  Dell pointed out that he thought gov­ern­ment should do more to pro­vide infra­struc­ture for semi­con­duc­tors in the United States.

  “When you have China invest­ing so aggres­sively in these strate­gic areas and the U.S. and Europe not, it cre­ates a real chal­lenge,” he said.

  Tyler Dur­den Fri, 10/​15/​2021 — 19:30
• Here’s The Truth Behind Biden’s ²⁴⁄₇ Port Oper­a­tions Pledge
  Here’s The Truth Behind Biden’s ²⁴⁄₇ Port Oper­a­tions Pledge

  Writ­ten by Lori Ann LaRocco, author of: “Trade War: Con­tain­ers Don’t Lie, Nav­i­gat­ing the Blus­ter” (Marine Money Inc., 2019) “Dynas­ties of the Sea: The Untold Sto­ries of the Post­war Ship­ping Pio­neers” (Marine Money Inc., 2018). First pub­lished on FreightWaves

  When you tear away the frills of Pres­i­dent Biden’s sup­ply chain announce­ment, it is essen­tially a polit­i­cal pawn to push the infra­struc­ture bill.The ugly truth is the con­ges­tion will not be alle­vi­ated any­time soon and it will def­i­nitely not be any bet­ter in the next 90 days. Why?

  It’s com­mon sense and math.

  You can’t blame private-​sector com­pa­nies for this plan’s future let­down. Trade takes peo­ple and coor­di­na­tion among all the play­ers within the sup­ply chain. The ports and all of the stake­hold­ers within these ports must be on the same page when it comes to a ²⁴⁄₇ operation.

  The holes in this announce­ment are numerous.

  First, 3,500 addi­tional con­tain­ers moved in a week is 200 con­tain­ers a day. Dur­ing the month of August, the San Pedro Bay ports moved 1,241,896 TEUs. This pro­jec­tion of 3,500 does not move the nee­dle at all. That’s a mere 14,000 con­tain­ers — which trans­lates into just 1% of the total TEUs. This plan is being called a “sprint.”

  Biden’s announce­ment of ²⁴⁄₇ ports is not accu­rate. Only one ter­mi­nal out of the 12 in San Pedro is oper­at­ing 24 hours a day — Total Ter­mi­nals Inter­na­tional (TTI) at the Port of Long Beach — and that every-​second sched­ule is only Mon­day through Thurs­day, mak­ing it a ²⁴⁄₄ sit­u­a­tion, not ²⁴⁄₇.

  A Port of Long Beach offi­cial said dis­cus­sions were tak­ing place with other ter­mi­nals. But as of now, no other ter­mi­nals have signed on. In the pur­suit of 24/​7, you need all the play­ers to make this successful.

  The ²⁴⁄₇ oper­a­tion at the Port of Los Ange­les is not even hap­pen­ing. When asked if the port was going ²⁴⁄₇ on Thurs­day, the day after this announce­ment, the port press office answered in an email:

  “No(t) one marine ter­mi­nal will go ²⁴⁄₇ tomor­row. This [is] a process to work the details of expanded hours lead­ing to around-​the-​clock work in the pri­vate sec­tor. It will take all pri­vate– and public-​sector part­ners to oper­a­tional­ize this. There are no fast levers, but we have more cargo than ever and need to move it safely and securely. Gene [Seroka, exec­u­tive direc­tor] will be meet­ing with indus­try asso­ciates tomor­row on this. No ETA as of today.”

  So the ports as of right now are sta­tus quo as it relates to expanded operations.

  The rea­son for this lack of ²⁴⁄₇ is because every facet of the sup­ply chain must be par­tic­i­pat­ing in an equal fash­ion. Truck­ers are not going to work ²⁴⁄₇ if they can’t pick up con­tain­ers at a ware­house that is closed. The flow of trade moves when every­onein that flow is work­ing. The ques­tion is what can be done to change the behav­iors of those in the sup­ply chain to go to ²⁴⁄₇?

  This frus­tra­tion can be read in a press release from the Har­bor Truck­ing Asso­ci­a­tion, which said the Biden administration’s plan did not address the core issues that have been plagu­ing the sup­ply chain.

  The release stated,

  “While steamship lines and their marine ter­mi­nal part­ners have been point­ing the fin­ger at the truck­ing indus­try for not uti­liz­ing appoint­ments dur­ing this cri­sis, the under­ly­ing causes have con­tin­ued to com­pound unchecked. Chal­lenges faced by truck­ers doing busi­ness at the ports stem from pro­duc­tiv­ity and effi­ciency issues that are not alle­vi­ated by merely shift­ing to ²⁴⁄₇ gate operations.”

  The HTA said thou­sands of empty con­tain­ers cur­rently are sit­ting in motor car­rier yards on top of the chas­sis, pre­vent­ing those chas­sis from mov­ing an import con­tainer off the dock.

  “So those appoint­ments go unused. … This is not an issue of unwill­ing­ness to pick up cargo, the entire sup­ply chain wants this cargo moved. It is instead a tan­gled web of shift­ing con­straints that impede and dis­cour­age par­tic­i­pa­tion,” the state­ment read.

  Also in this plan FedEx, UPS and Wal­mart were men­tioned in step­ping up in help­ing alle­vi­ate the sup­ply chain.

  When asked for specifics, FedEx global media rela­tions responded:

  “FedEx Logis­tics Pres­i­dent and CEO Dr. Udo Lange appre­ci­ated the oppor­tu­nity to join other busi­ness lead­ers and the admin­is­tra­tion to share our exper­tise and dis­cuss sup­ply chain issues, but we have no other details to share at this time.”

  Wal­mart spokesper­son Ash­ley Nolan said:

  “We’ll increase through­put by as much as 50% dur­ing the night­time hours being added at the port.”

  At the time of pub­li­ca­tion, UPS did not respond to comment.

  In the sea of faces of those attend­ing this press event, a crit­i­cal piece of the sup­ply chain was miss­ing — the ocean car­ri­ers and the port terminals.

  When Trans­porta­tion Sec­re­tary Pete Buttigieg’s office was asked why there was no par­tic­i­pa­tion, the response was vague:

  “The admin­is­tra­tion has and will con­tinue to have a reg­u­lar dia­logue with ocean car­ri­ers and ter­mi­nal operators.”

  And yet, at least one of those car­ri­ers has not been con­tacted — Hapag-​Lloyd, one of the largest ocean ship­ping lines in the world.

  “We have not been approached,” con­firmed a com­pany spokesperson.

  “Ships are already oper­at­ing ²⁴⁄₇ when­ever pos­si­ble. The chal­lenge is to get con­tain­ers off the ter­mi­nal by truck and rail because the ware­houses will not/​cannot take deliv­er­ies on week­ends. It is a lot about ship­pers’ inabil­ity to take deliv­ery of their goods and infra­struc­ture bot­tle­necks in the U.S.”

  The car­ri­ers and the ter­mi­nal oper­a­tors are key pieces to this puz­zle. The ter­mi­nals are the key seg­ment of the sup­ply chain that not only sched­ules the truck con­tainer pick­ups and drop-​offs, they also request the labor to unload the vessels.

  So if this is a 90-​day sprint, the U.S. sup­ply chain needs more mus­cle and a mas­sive shot of adrenaline.

  Tyler Dur­den Fri, 10/​15/​2021 — 19:10