The disruption of the global supply chain is far-reaching, and the port congestion in the United States is very serious at present, which makes the supply of goods in local stores blocked on a large scale, and for American businesses, the year-end shopping season of Black Friday and Christmas has entered the countdown, which will undoubtedly have a serious impact on the economy. In response to the current container congestion at two major ports in California, Ryan Petersen, CEO of international freight forwarding company "Flexport" (Flexport), sent 30 tweets on the 22nd local time to attack the port blockage phenomenon, and even warned that the impact on the United States and even the global economy may be worse than the "Lehman crisis".

"A port closure would be worse than the collapse of Lehman Brothers, both of which would have catastrophic consequences for all the people who depend on them," Petersen said. With Lehman, the US government could have just printed a lot of money." zerohedge, a financial blog known for its criticism of the Fed's aggressive lending, also said Petersen may be right. Over the past 19 months, the Fed has exacerbated this shipping crisis by pumping unprecedented amounts of money into the capital markets, but they can't print their way out of it. As port congestion increases, the circulatory system of the global economy could be at risk of collapse.

Petersen said his company has hired a captain to tour the two largest U.S. ports, Los Angeles and Long Beach, which handle 40 percent of the country's shipping containers. During a three-hour round trip through each terminal, fewer than a dozen containers were seen being unloaded. According to him, there are always hundreds of cranes at the two ports, but only "seven are still operating and they seem to be moving quite slowly," while "the containers on the docks are simply full, meaning they don't have room to load new containers from ships or land." It's a real traffic jam." Petersen pointed out that the current bottleneck is not a shortage of cranes, but the container terminals are overcrowded, because there is no spare chassis to clear the containers.

According to a recent Bloomberg report, according to Petersen's "clues" investigation, the cause of the container congestion problem at the two major ports is a humble local government regulation - the city of Long Beach prohibits the stacking of containers more than two layers, resulting in nowhere to put the storage yard. Looking at why containers are "everywhere," Bloomberg said, "It turns out that the problem isn't space constraints, but a local rule - the city of Long Beach prohibits businesses from stacking containers more than two levels."

In the wake of Petersen's tweetstorm, Long Beach city officials announced that within the next 90 days, the two-tier limit would be relaxed and the port would allow four or five containers to be stacked together. Bloomberg also commented in the same report that Petersen's "Twitter storm" could "turn the tide" and save Americans' Christmas holiday from supply chain woes.

In addition, Petersen said it is necessary to correct the current bottleneck as soon as possible, because this is a "vicious circle that is rapidly spinning out of control and, if continued, will destroy the global economy." Goldman Sachs analyst Jordan Alliger agreed with that statement and told clients to monitor movements at the port. "The most striking indicator of congestion is the number of container ships parked at ports waiting to unload, which recovered again to 70 on October 18 after reaching a record 73 on September 19, compared with the pre-pandemic average of roughly zero to one," Alliger said.

It is worth noting that the US President Biden administration has offered new measures to solve port congestion! On October 25, local time, the Port of Los Angeles announced that in order to improve the efficiency of port operations in the United States and improve congestion, the Port of Los Angeles and the Port of Long Beach will implement a new policy - a new surcharge for shipping companies, applicable to imported containers stranded at the terminal. The Biden administration says the new policy is aimed at easing growing congestion on cargo ships.

Gene Seroka, executive director of the Port of Los Angeles, said: "We must speed up the flow of containers through the port to reduce the number of waiting ships. At present, these two types of containers account for 40% of the total number of containers at our terminals. If the boxes can be cleared in time, the docks will have more space to handle the cargo." In a statement announcing the measure, Mario Cordero, executive director of the Port of Long Beach, explained that the terminal was running out of space and immediate action had to be taken to speed up the flow of containers to make room for those that were about to be unloaded. White House press secretary Jen Psaki told CNBC on the 26th local time that the Biden administration will continue to promote ways to address supply chain issues and plans to discuss global business disruptions with world leaders at the G20 summit this weekend.

Since September this year, dozens of cargo ships have been waiting outside the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach. In response, US President Joe Biden delivered a speech on the 13th, announcing that the Port of Los Angeles and the Port of Long Beach will be implemented 24 hours a day, 7 days a week to solve the problem of port cargo box congestion, and allow the US local cargo transport trucks to transport goods at night when the traffic is relatively smooth, to deal with the tension in the supply chain of consumer goods.