Originally Posted by OLD BOY

Some people are pointing to the container ships waiting to get into British ports being due to Brexit. However, the problem is worldwide and clearly nothing to do with Brexit.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business...ins-shortages/

[EXTRACT]

Standing on the Pacific coast in California, a casual observer might find themselves thinking America had just severed close ties with its biggest trading partners.

Outside Los Angeles and Long Beach - the country's two biggest ports - a queue of container ships stretches to the horizon, waiting to dock and offload their wares.

But this clear evidence of a supply chain crisis has nothing to do with any Brexit-style rupture. Instead, it has been caused by global chaos as ports struggle to recover from Covid shutdowns and the world struggles with a massive shortage of lorry drivers.

The turmoil in America is linked directly to disruption in Britain which critics here are keen to blame on our departure from the European Union - despite clear evidence of the same issues not just in LA, but across the Continent as well.

“Britain is by no means alone in suffering these problems, there have been issues at Rotterdam, Hamburg and Antwerp, and we have not been so badly hit as some which have much bigger volumes going through them as containers hang around for longer,” says Richard Ballantyne, chief executive of the British Ports Association.

“This is not a Brexit issue - rather than the haulage problem - and it’s unfair to say that border controls resulting from leaving the EU are a cause of this.”

The Port of LA, known as ‘America’s Port’, is the biggest entry site in the US for overseas imports. Its (literal) next-door neighbour, the Port of Long Beach, is also struggling. Together, the pair operate 13 private container terminals and account for about a third of US sea imports.

The sites, both in Long Beach, LA, have been chockablock for months, with vessels waiting weeks just to make it to the docks.