Good news: The supply-chain crunch appears to have already peaked in the U.S.
Evidence keeps piling up to suggest that the U.S. is slowly but surely making progress in easing freight congestion and supply shortages bloom.bg/3oIZ4l3
🚢Average ocean freight rates for a 40-ft container have declined for 8 weeks
🚢Spot pricing for the Shanghai-Los Angeles trade route is down about 19% from its September peak
🚢There are fewer containers lingering for more than 9 days at the Port of L.A. bloom.bg/3oIZ4l3
The threat of fines for excessive dwell times at the port seems to have led to a meaningful improvement.
The ports of L.A. and Long Beach have delayed the penalties (which start at $100 a day and rise in $100 increments) until at least later in November bloom.bg/3oIZ4l3
An influx of additional sweeper ships used to pick up empty containers is helping clear dock space for new cargo.
Local officials are temporarily increasing the number of containers that can be vertically stacked in nearby warehouses and container yards bloom.bg/3oIZ4l3
In the industrial world, supply disruptions weighed on short-term sales, but the damage to profit margins ended up being fairly limited in the third quarter.
Most executives sound very optimistic about future demand in 2022 and beyond bloom.bg/3oIZ4l3
U.S. manufacturing output rose in October to the highest level since March 2019.
The factory production rebound was driven in part by an 11% jump in motor vehicles and parts. This suggests the automotive industry is navigating the supply crunch bloom.bg/3oIZ4l3
A peak in supply-chain stress doesn’t mean it’s over.
Shipping costs are still very high on a historical basis: The global benchmark rate is up more than 200% from the same period last year bloom.bg/3oIZ4l3
“There’s been some acceleration of the ports moving containers out and some early signs of dampening on ocean freight rates in the spot market,” said @biesrob1, CEO of @CHRobinson.
“Whether or not that’s a trend is yet to be determined” bloom.bg/3oIZ4l3
@biesrob1@CHRobinson For the supply-chain crunch to get better, it first needed to stop getting worse.
India may appear to be stalling on climate goals, having fought to maintain coal use at the COP26 summit.
🚗 But it is successfully building awareness about electric vehicles trib.al/m5x7IDu
In Glasgow, India unveiled a government-run portal — E-Amrit — that’s a one-stop shop for all your EV questions.
From subsidies for drivers and manufacturers to charging facility locations and financing options, the goal is to boost consumer knowledge trib.al/xhYCkxw
⚡️🚗 This will shape the EV adoption story globally.
The more drivers know about their options — and the more governments can address worries about how far EVs can travel — the less likely they are to resort to old, fossil-fuel driven habits trib.al/xhYCkxw
How weak is China’s economy? Recent data suggests it has slowed sharply.
It may not even be growing at all, given the unreliable nature of China’s domestic statistics. Most observers say the slowdown is due to the government’s attempt to stamp out Covid trib.al/klMMp5J
The property sector’s travails are more a symptom than a cause of China’s problems.
The nation’s economic model is probably broken, much like Japan’s was three decades before — and for similar reasons trib.al/8hiC5nn
Japan’s problems started when markets began to be liberalized in the early 1980s.
The corporate sector’s financial deficit started to balloon, meaning it spent much more than it earned.
It's conventional wisdom that the U.S. economy is built on Americans' endless appetite to buy lots of stuff.
Household consumption makes up 67% of GDP. When the economy falters, we're told spending is our patriotic duty. But it doesn't have to be this way trib.al/gIDH2vV
Suddenly, Americans can’t spend like they used to. Store shelves are emptying, and it can take months to find a car, refrigerator or sofa.
If this continues, we may need to — gasp! — live more like the Europeans. That actually might not be a bad thing trib.al/gIDH2vV
Americans haven't always acted like this.
Consumption per capita grew about 65% from 1990 to 2015, compared with about 35% growth in Europe. Household consumption makes up only about 50% of GDP in Germany trib.al/gIDH2vV
The total value of all cryptocurrency assets has just exceeded $3 trillion.
This means the entire crypto sector is around 20% more valuable than the equity of the two biggest tech companies -- Apple and Microsoft -- put together trib.al/VUnXork
The previous crypto bull run peaked at the end of 2017 at about $800 billion.
In 2018, crypto crashed almost 90%. But over the next three years, crypto recouped the lost ground and is back at its peak valuation compared to tech companies trib.al/p8LQVoz
One way to analyze crypto valuation is to consider the sector like a tech company.
There are thousands of ideas out there: Some are traditional services that crypto can arguably deliver cheaper and better than centralized finance, others are entirely new trib.al/p8LQVoz
In the U.S., 23% of women return to work within 10 days of giving birth, and 40% percent of maternal deaths occur in the six weeks following birth.
Paid leave can help solve the maternal mortality crisis trib.al/Nkq1Ju1
The U.S. ranks last among high-income nations in maternal mortality rates, despite spending more than $111 billion on maternal and infant health care per year.
A closer look at the data shows that Black women lead these numbers trib.al/IOXN7ph
Black women are two to three times more likely than White women to die in childbirth or from pregnancy-related complications.
Solving this crisis is essential for bringing down America’s high maternal mortality rate trib.al/IOXN7ph
💉 If only we had a vaccine for cancer, people have said. Oh, wait, we do.
And now a major study has shown just how effective it is trib.al/R1YsHor
In 2008, the U.K. began offering girls ages 12 and 13 an immunization against the human papillomavirus -- which is the cause of nearly all cervical cancer.
The vaccine was later rolled out in a catch-up program to older girls and, since 2019, to boys trib.al/OrKqUJs
The HPV vaccine had a dramatic effect on rates of cervical cancer, with an 87% reduction in those who were offered the vaccine at ages 12-13, according to data from a population-based cancer registry taken from 2006 to 2019 trib.al/OrKqUJs