Another wake-up call?

About $9 billion a day in global trade was held up by the massive traffic jam in the Suez Canal at Egypt. Salvage teams on Monday finally freed the huge container ship that had been stuck for nearly a week in the Suez Canal, after crashing into a bank of a single-lane stretch of the canal.

Navigation in the canal resumed at 6 p.m. Monday, said the head of the Suez Canal Authority, adding that the first ships that were moving carried livestock.

At least 113 of the more than 420 vessels that had waited for the Ever Given, a Panama-flagged container ship, to be freed were expected to cross the canal by yesterday morning. 

The Ever Given is longer than the Empire State Building and transports 18,000 and 24,000 containers - enough furnishing to fill about 20,000 homes.

It could take another 10 days to clear the backlog on either end of the canal, it was reported.

The canal, itself, it was reported, lost between $12 million and $15 million in revenue due to the lengthy traffic jam.

Here’s a list of eight types of cargo routinely transported on container ships.

*Non-perishable cargo, like manufactured goods in dry freight containers.

*Cargo that’s perishable or needs to be temperature controlled in insulated containers.

*Perishable, chilled, and frozen cargo, like agricultural products or seafood in refrigerated containers (reefers).

*Bulk dry powders, raw materials like coal and granular substances like grains in bulk containers.

*Non-perishable cargo that could be damaged in transport by condensation, like coffee and cocoa, shipped in ventilated containers.

*Oversized cargo like building materials, vehicles, indivisible loads, lumber, machinery and construction equipment, carried in flat rack containers and platform flats.

*Oversized cargo or large, awkwardly shaped items that cannot fit in a dry freight container, shipped in open top containers.

*Bulk hazardous or nonhazardous chemicals, oils, liquids and food goods, shipped in tank containers.

Along with commonly shipped cargo, the specialized, reusable intermodal containers used to carry cargo are expensive to replace.

This massive traffic jam at the Suez Canal serves as a reminder to us Americans about how dependent we are becoming on the global supply chain, which in turn depends on the Suez Canal.

It is not an isolationist-type idea for Americans to consider whether they’d like to pay a little more to purchase supplies made in the U.S.A. that we need  for everyday life in this country. 

A little less dependency on the global supply chain that might get log-jammed at the Suez Canal again someday (or controlled by rogue nations) is not a bad idea to consider.

Our country needs its own robust domestic production and it’s important to keep U.S. taxes reasonable to prevent U.S. companies from moving their operations to other countries that have lower taxes. The Biden administration’s tax increase plan that includes increasing corporate tax from 21 percent to 28 percent seems counterproductive to encouraging U.S. domestic production.

The Holton Recorder

109 W. Fourth St.
Holton, KS 66436
Phone: 785-364-3141
 

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