West coast ports to operate 24/7 to combat supply chain disruptions

Brian Sozzi and Julie Hyman give their latest hot take on Biden’s plan to keep major west coast ports open 24/7 to combat the lingering supply chain disruptions in the nation.

Video Transcript

JULIE HYMAN: We've been talking a lot about port congestion, haven't we? Off the coast of California, a lot of ships with a lot of containers just sitting waiting to be unloaded. Well, President Biden yesterday announced a measure that is aimed at trying to improve that. The Port of Los Angeles is going to be open 24/7. The Port of Long Beach already is open 24/7.

But the story is not that simple, right, Brian Sozzi? Even if it's open all the time, it doesn't mean that the ships are going to come in, the stuff is going to get unloaded, it's going to get on trucks and get out to America in quicker fashion. It seems like there are some sort of other roadblocks associated with all of this.

BRIAN SOZZI: Yeah, and fun fact. Today, really, those two ports handle 40% of all cargo containers entering the US, so this is a big deal.

But to your point, Julie, no it doesn't work like you just take these big things off of these giant ships that have been in the ocean for really quite some time here and then they're going to show up at your house. I mean, at the core of this, you need human bodies to be helping unload these things, putting them on trucks, putting them on railroads. And as we know, there continues to be a massive, massive shortage of human bodies in this trucking and logistics industry.

And then secondarily, at what prices are these goods going to arrive to warehouses and consumers at? Likely at significantly higher prices compared to 3, 6, 12 months ago here.

So there's a lot more going on here. Positive development, step in the right direction. Maybe I will get that Barbie doll for my niece this holiday season, not some time in early next year. That's good. But there's a lot of steps here, and it will take time to address it.

JULIE HYMAN: Did you order it already?

BRIAN SOZZI: I was actually going to start doing my shopping next week. You know, speaking of shopping, Julie, Black Friday is starting at Best Buy October 19. It's a little early. It's a little early for that.

JULIE HYMAN: I mean, can we stop calling it Black Friday? It has no meaning anymore. Holiday shopping season, that's all it is. It's just holiday shopping season.

BRIAN SOZZI: There's no meaning to holidays.

JULIE HYMAN: And apparently it already started, right?

One more thing I just want to mention here as we talk about these bottlenecks, and those are some of the companies that met virtually with President Biden that you see listed there, and some of them have chartered their own ships. But apparently when the Port of Long Beach went 24/7, there were still some bottlenecks because they had rules still around the trucks coming in, when they could unload. And the trucking company said that those rules were too onerous. So then the Port of Long Beach tried to sort of change and adjust to that.

So we'll see if the LA port has learned some of those lessons and maybe will avoid some of that friction as it goes 24/7. But it'll be something to continue to monitor here to see if this improves things to a large degree because we need it. Your niece needs a Barbie. What are you waiting for, by the way? You need to put in the order.