The economic slowdown has had a huge impact on Long Beach, California. This photo shows a Toyota lot in the Port of Long Beach where unsold cars are stored after being unloaded from the container ships. Toyota typically leases 150 acres to store this inventory, but have been forced to lease another 15-20 acres to deal with the decline in demand for these automobiles.
From what I heard around town when I went home for winter break, the lines of casuals at the hiring hall has been tremendously long, with men and women waiting overnight in their cars in the hopes of finding work around the docks. The problem is, consumer confidence is down, which leads to low demand for goods, particularly foreign-made consumer goods. And since the ports of Long Beach and Los Angeles account for a large percentage of total imports, these cities are hit disproportionally hard.
In addition, the Ports of Long Beach/LA are also major suppliers of cardboard and other recycled goods, which Chinese companies use to ship and package goods back to the US. Since we demand fewer goods from China, the Chinese need less of these recycled goods, so the ports are full of recycled waste, with no buyers. This has also caused a huge drop in prices for recycled goods.
Here is a short video on this topic from PBS’ News Hour.
(Photo credit to Getty Images)
