Inflation
Our President is a semi-idiot. He denies that government spending is the cause of inflation. He is only half-wrong.
The other half is idiotic leftist policies. We do not have supply chain problems, we have policy problems going as far back as 1992, best symbolized by Ross Perot’s reference to a “Great sucking sound.”
We outsourced our manufacturing, forgetting that a country that country that exports only raw materials and imports manufactured goods is a de facto colony of the manufacturer. About two years ago Japan recognized that it had outsourced too much to China, and began paying companies to leave China, even if they relocated to third countries such as Viet Nam. It is time we do the same. Biden won’t hear of it.
We gave away energy independence the day Biden was inaugurated, leaving us dependent on other countries for oil. We are begging Venezuela, the world’s largest reserves holder, to sell us oil. Unfortunately, 90% of its exports go to China for debt service and the remaining 10% goes to Cuba to pay for internal security services.
We have begged Saudi Arabia and Abu Dhabi to increase oil production. They refused to take his calls because he and Obama both appear devoted to ensuring Iran becomes a nuclear power. Both countries view Iran as an existential threat. Re-opening US oil and gas production isn’t considered an option.
The impact of petroleum on the economy goes far beyond gasoline in cars. It is the primary source of winter heat for the US Midwest. It is the basis of the entire plastics industry, and critical to medication manufacturing. The focus on electric cars is badly misplaced. The electricity used by a car’s battery is generated elsewhere. Its use by the car merely moves the CO2 and other pollutants, it doesn’t reduce them unless the electricity was generated via nuclear or hydropower.
We have known for more than twenty years that long-haul truck drivers are disappearing at an approximate rate of 3% per year, and have done nothing to encourage replacement. Most truck drivers are independent and are small business owners. They refuse to cross the border into California because on a scale of business-friendly to business-unfriendly, California is in a class all of its own: business-malevolent. Regulations on truckers are prohibitively expensive, and they don’t need to enter California to make a living.
We have allowed China and other countries to steal our intellectual property, and sell our products back to us without paying to develop them. President Biden is undoing all of the Trump-era tariffs on China that penalized China for the practice. Biden ran on a platform consisting entirely of “I am not Trump” and is focused on undoing everything Trump did, whether good or bad.
No one in the Biden administration appears to understand the fundamentals of integrated supply chains. I understand the issues because I learned at the knee of my long-time friend and client, Steve Ferreira, the acknowledged worldwide expert on the topic. They involve parallel paths for movement of both goods and information. When they involve containerized cargo, multiple extra layers of both processes and policies/laws/treaties get involved. On arrival in port the containers are off-loaded onto flatbed trucks that move them to a specified position in the yard.
Total container spots available at the Los Angeles ports is about 25,000. Each container carries a unique code, as does the parking spot. If a container includes merchandise for multiple Beneficial Cargo Owners (the entities that will take delivery of the cargo) the container is taken to an immigration and customs enforcement warehouse where it may be searched for contraband (drugs, weapons or people). The radical left of the Democratic Party made disestablishing ICE a key objective, not an inducement for hiring on.
The potential for something to go wrong is enormous. Nobody in the Biden Administration understands complexity, certainly not the President, the VP nor the Transportation Secretary. If insufficient trucks show up at the port to offload containers, the ship spends extended time in port. If there are insufficient trucks to move containers, the problems multiply. If a single element of information is mis-reported, the whole system collapses. And, this was the simplified version.
Leftists’ ignorant ideology-driven policies have driven a great deal of inflation. And, they’re proposing to double down on bad policy by calling yesterday for higher taxes on businesses and spending more money to punish carbon fuel producers and users. And, the US Stock Market dropped another four percent today.
God Help Us.
Other than "semi" idiot I agree entirely with your post.
Ross Perot was belittled, but he was right.