STORY AT-A-GLANCE
- More than 80% of global merchandise trade by volume is carried by ships, which means disruptions to ports can lead to major economic disruption
- The Container Port Performance Index ranks 370 ports that had a minimum of 20 ports of call within the 12-month study period
- Coming in second to last and last were Long Beach and Los Angeles ports in California, with index values of -281.841 and -348.928, respectively
- At top performing ports like King Abdullah Port in Saudi Arabia, 97 containers were moved per hour, compared to just 26 at the California ports, highlighting the stark differences in efficiency
- The weaknesses at U.S. ports are contributing to high inflation, which is exacerbated by supply chain issues that make it more expensive to move goods
Illustrating the fragility of global supply chains, in March 2021, a massive container ship became wedged across the Suez Canal in Egypt — blocking “an artery of world trade,” triggering a rise in oil prices and leading to fallout that affected shipping around the globe.1
It’s hard to believe that a single incident could have ripples that congest the supply chain around the globe, but it’s true that a single weak link can have devastating effects. In 2021, another weak link came to light in Southern California, where two ports came in last on the Container Port Performance Index, created by the World Bank and S&P Global Market Intelligence.2
Ports Play a Critical Role in Global Economy
Between the COVID-19 pandemic, the blocking of the Suez Canal in March 2021 and the war in Ukraine, the global economy continues to be put under extreme stress. According to the Container Port Performance Index (CPPI):3
“The most visible indications of stress in the system are the shortages of certain products, the ships waiting at anchorage outside the major maritime ports, and the impact on the cost of goods. These challenges also continue to underline the critical role that ports, and their associated logistical chains, play in the global economy.”
More than 80% of global merchandise trade by volume is carried by ships, which means disruptions to ports can lead to major economic disruption. If a port is inefficient, even for a short time period, it may cause shortages of essential goods, driving up prices as occurred early on in the pandemic.
“But over the medium to longer term, an inefficient port will result in slower economic growth, less employment, and higher costs for importers and exporters,” the report explained.4 Because so many global goods depend on maritime transport, it’s made container ports “critical nodes in global supply chains and central to the growth strategies of many emerging economies.” The report explained:5
“Maritime transport is the backbone of globalized trade and the manufacturing supply chain. The maritime sector offers the most economical, energy efficient, and reliable mode of transportation over long distances. More than four-fifths of global merchandise trade (by volume) is carried by sea.
A significant and growing portion of that volume, accounting for approximately 35 percent of total volumes and more than 60 percent of commercial value, is carried in containers.”
Poor performing ports, therefore, can put significant strain on global trade, including shipment delays, supply chain disruptions, additional costs and reduced competitiveness. Tight schedules are required, so poor performance at one port can easily affect routes at different ports of call:6
“Poor performance at one port on the route could disrupt the entire schedule. The result far too often is that instead of facilitating trade, the port increases the cost of imports and exports, reduces the competitiveness of its host country and its hinterland, and inhibits economic growth and poverty reduction.”
Southern California Ports Rank Last
The 2021 CPPI ranks 370 ports that had a minimum of 20 ports of call within the 12-month study period. It uses both a statistical approach and a technical approach intended to reflect expert knowledge and judgment to rank container port performance. Factored into the rankings was the amount of time vessels spend in port to exchange cargo.7
King Abdullah Port in Saudi Arabia and the Port of Salalah in Oman earned first and second place, with an index value of 93.387 and 87.372, respectively. “In the Middle East, heavy investments in container port infrastructure and technology are proving to be effective,” Martin Humphreys, lead transport economist at the World Bank, told Freight Waves.8
On the other end of the spectrum, coming in second to last and last, were Long Beach and Los Angeles ports in California, with index values of -281.841 and -348.928, respectively.9 Freight Waves cited “a multitude of factors” that led to a backlog of ships on the West Coast in 2021, including, “COVID-induced labor headwinds at the ports, slow chassis turns, a lack of container staging space, slow rail service and containers out of position in the network …”10
At top performing ports like King Abdullah Port, 97 containers were moved per hour, compared to just 26 at the California ports, highlighting the stark differences in efficiency. “Poorly performing ports are characterized by limitations in spatial and operating efficiency, limitations in maritime and landside access, inadequate oversight, and poor coordination between the public agencies involved, resulting in a lack of predictability and reliability,” according to the CPPI.11
In October 2021, 100 ships were waiting to unload at the adjacent Long Beach and Los Angeles ports, Reuters reported, reaching a new all-time high.12 As the world’s largest trader, the world’s largest importer in terms of dollars and the largest economy, the U.S. depends on shipping trade for economic stability and growth. The weaknesses at U.S. ports are contributing to high inflation, which is exacerbated by supply chain issues that make it more expensive to move goods.13
World Bank’s Nefarious Side
World Bank produces the CPPI in collaboration with S&P Global Market Intelligence. The Washington, D.C.-based World Bank Group and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) were founded at the Bretton Woods conference in 1944.14
Each has 189 member countries, and in order to join the IMF, they must first join the World Bank Group. With a stated mission to “reduce poverty and increase shared prosperity,” World Bank Group works in tandem with IMF, which “serves to stabilize the international monetary system and acts as a monitor of the world’s currencies.”15
However, while the front of these institutions appears to be investments in social infrastructure — schools, health systems, drinking water, sanitation and environmental protection — at the foundation is a move for ultimate control. According to economist and geopolitical analyst Peter Koenig, who worked with the World Bank for more than 30 years:16
“Not only are they regularly lending huge sums of money to horror regimes around the world, but they blackmail poor nations into accepting draconian conditions imposed by the west. In other words, the WB and the IMF are guilty of the most atrocious human rights abuses.”
World Bank and IMF offered debt relief in the form of grants or low interest loans to countries collapsing economically during the COVID-19 pandemic, but there were strings attached.
Koenig noted, “You must follow the rules laid out by WHO, you must follow the rules on testing on vaccination, mandatary vaccination — if you conform to these and other country-specific rules, like letting western corporations tap your natural resources — you may receive, WB [World Bank] and IMF assistance.”17
Once countries accept the aid, they’re further indebted while the elite at the top gain ever-increasing control.18 Interestingly, in October 2021, IMF’s managing director Kristalina Georgieva was involved in a data scandal, including accusations that she pressured subordinates to boost China’s position in an influential World Bank report.19
After a review by the lender’s board, she was allowed to remain in her top position. Sam Callahan tweeted after the fact, “One of the most important accusations in the world went under everyone’s radar.”20
Are Disruptions to Supply Chains Planned?
You may have heard about the World Economic Forum’s (WEF) Great Reset and their plan for you to “own nothing and be happy” as part of WEF’s 2030 agenda.21 In the first quarter of 2021, 15% of U.S. homes sold were purchased by corporate investors22 — not families looking to achieve their American dream.
While they’re competing with middle-class Americans for the homes, the average American has virtually no chance of winning a home over an investment firm, which may pay 20% to 50% over asking price,23 in cash, sometimes scooping up entire neighborhoods at once so they can turn them into rentals.24 It appears we’re quickly entering an era where home ownership is becoming out of reach for many — necessitating renting instead of owning, a first step to “owning nothing.”
World war, however, is Phase 2 of The Great Reset plan, which includes the destruction of supply chains, the energy sector, food supply and workforce, to create dependency on government, which in turn will be taken over by private interests and central banks through the collapse of the global economy.25
In addition to problems with ports and maritime trade, war has disrupted supplies further, driving up fertilizer prices and, in turn, food costs. Meanwhile, Bill Gates has been buying up U.S. farmland at a frenzied pace and owns more farmland than any other private farmer in the country.26 Leaders around the world have warned that, due to the war in Ukraine — which is considered the world’s bread basket — food shortages are coming.
Other strange events have also been occurring. In the whole of 2019, there were only two reported fires at U.S. food processing plants. From January 2021 to April 21, 2022, 18 were reported — a sizeable jump — and they seem to be accelerating.27 People are beginning to take notice of these seemingly random fires and accidents that are occurring with increasing frequency at food processing plants across the U.S.
Could this all be coincidence, driving up food and other consumer good prices to record highs and causing food and other product shortages, or is something more sinister going on?
In the U.S., some have called for the privatization of ports to improve their performance,28 but others say the problems they’re facing have been decades in the making and won’t change until other major issues — like opportunistic profiteering and a stranglehold by large shipping cabals — are resolved.29
- 1 BBC News March 24, 2021
- 2 Container Port Performance Index
- 3, 4 Container Port Performance Index, Foreword
- 5, 6, 9 Container Port Performance Index, Executive summary
- 7, 8, 10 Freight Waves May 26, 2022
- 11 Container Port Performance Index, Intro
- 12 Reuters October 20, 2021
- 13, 28 Forbes May 27, 2022
- 14, 15 The World Bank, Who We Are, History
- 16, 17, 18 Conspiracy Analyst November 29, 2020
- 19 Bloomberg October 11, 2021
- 20 Twitter January 18, 2022
- 21 Forbes November 10, 2016
- 22 Slate June 19, 2021
- 23 YouTube June 10, 2021
- 24 The Wall Street Journal April 4, 2021
- 25 Winter Oak March 9, 2022
- 26 Land Report, January 11, 2021
- 27 Really Graceful, YouTube April 22, 2022, 8:00
- 29 The American Prospect February 3, 2022
Two Storms, One Harvest
Every food crisis in living memory has been a one-shock event. The 2008 price spike was a commodity bubble. The 2020 shortages were a logistics failure. The 2022 grain scare was a war on one exporter’s ports. Each time, the system bent, adjusted, and recovered, and each time the experts assured us afterward that global markets are simply too big and too diversified to fail.
What nobody in Washington seems eager to discuss is that 2026 is shaping up to be something the modern food system has never actually faced. Two independent shocks, one climatic and one geopolitical, are converging on the same harvest cycle at the same time. Not sequentially. Simultaneously.
Start with the weather. The Pacific Ocean is currently building toward what forecasters now openly call a record event. NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center puts the odds of at least a strong El Niño near 88 percent, with roughly two in three odds it reaches “very strong” status, the tier reserved for perhaps three or four events in the entire satellite era. Every major global model now projects a median peak in Super El Niño territory, and most of them project it exceeding the 2015-16 event, which until now held the modern record. Sea surface anomalies were already brushing the super threshold in mid-July, months before these events normally peak. The atmosphere has already shifted into El Niño mode, and the event is forecast to crest in late fall and early winter.
This is not about “climate change.” It’s about the standard cycles of weather, and the cycle we’re currently in is one that has likely devastated societies in the past. We’re better prepared as a society today, but not all Americans are equally prepared.
Serious households have started doing the quiet math on their own. Grocery bills tell part of the story, and the forecast maps tell the rest, which is why long-term food storage has moved from fringe hobby to mainstream line item in the family budget, with established suppliers like Heaven’s Harvest seeing demand from people who five years ago would have rolled their eyes at the idea. That instinct is not paranoia. It is pattern recognition, and the pattern is worth walking through carefully.
Editor’s Note: Heaven’s Harvest IS a sponsor, but the warnings of this article are real and would be written even if we didn’t have a survival food sponsor. With that said, those who take advantage of what they offer can use promo code “Patriot” for 15% off.
The Fertilizer Clock Is Already Running
While the Pacific warms, the second shock has been unfolding in the Strait of Hormuz. The conflict with Iran turned the world’s most important energy chokepoint into a contested waterway, and the consequences reach far beyond the gas pump. Roughly a third of global fertilizer trade moves through Hormuz, and the disruption sent urea prices up 86 percent year over year by March, with a 53 percent jump in a single month.
The World Bank projects energy prices rising about 24 percent in 2026 and fertilizer about 31 percent. By its own accounting, fertilizer prices ran 35 percent higher in the first five months of this year than the same period last year.
Here is the mechanism the nightly news will not explain. Fertilizer is not a grocery item. It is a time-delayed input. The nitrogen a farmer in Iowa or Punjab could not afford to apply this spring does not show up as a problem this spring. It shows up as a thinner harvest six to twelve months later.
The World Bank’s own food security brief concedes that the effects of reduced applications earlier this season “are likely to become visible only later in harvest outcomes.” Translate that from institutional language into plain English and it means this. The damage is already done, it is already in the ground, and we are simply waiting for it to arrive on the shelf.
Now check the calendar. Six to twelve months from the spring planting season lands us squarely in late 2026 and early 2027. Which is precisely when the strongest El Niño in the instrumental record is forecast to peak, bringing its signature droughts to Southeast Asia, Australia, southern Africa, northern Brazil, and South Asia, the very regions that grow the world’s rice, sugar, and oilseeds.
The World Bank warns openly that a strong El Niño “could disrupt multiple crop belts simultaneously” on top of the conflict-driven input costs. Their baseline projection assumes the Middle East disruptions ease by autumn. What in the last two years of Middle East history suggests that assumption is safe?
The System Has No Slack Left
The comfortable answer is that global markets always adjust. But adjustment requires slack, and the slack is gone. Global cereal production is expected to decline from last year’s records even before El Niño does its work. The UN World Food Programme, hardly a den of right-wing preppers, is calling this the most significant disruption to its supply chains since Covid and the invasion of Ukraine, and its supply chain director put the stakes bluntly.
Today’s supply chain challenges are tomorrow’s hunger crisis.
There is also a political dimension that markets cannot price. When food gets scarce, governments do not behave like economists. They behave like politicians. Export bans, hoarding mandates, and panic buying at the national level turned the modest rice shortfall of 2008 into a global crisis, and analysts are already warning that import-dependent nations are the first dominoes.
The 2015-16 Super El Niño, a far weaker event than what is now forecast, threw tens of millions into food stress across Africa and Asia. This one is projected to be stronger, and it arrives with fertilizer already rationed by price and shipping lanes already contested by missiles.
What Joseph Knew
Scripture does not treat preparation for lean years as faithlessness. It treats it as wisdom delivered in advance to those willing to act on it.
Behold, there come seven years of great plenty throughout all the land of Egypt: And there shall arise after them seven years of famine; and all the plenty shall be forgotten in the land of Egypt.
Joseph did not respond to that warning with a hashtag or a committee. He stored grain during the years of abundance, and when the famine came, Egypt stood while its neighbors begged. The lesson is not that famine is certain. It is that the time to prepare is precisely when preparation still looks optional.
Nobody who filled a pantry in a year of plenty has ever regretted it, and nobody standing in an empty aisle has ever been glad he waited for certainty.
None of this calls for panic, and panic is the enemy of sound judgment anyway. It calls for the same unglamorous prudence our grandparents considered ordinary. Keep some cash margin, know your local growers, and put real food in deep storage while it is cheap and available, because the entire arc of this story is that cheap and available is a closing window.
Families looking for a straightforward place to start can visit Heaven’s Harvest and use promo code Patriot for 15 percent off long-term storable food. The forecasts may yet soften, the strait may yet reopen, and we should pray they do. But hope is a fine thing to hold and a foolish thing to eat.
Not to mention the egregious taxes and graft extorted by Newsom’s regime. Only a fool does business in Commifornia, and at this rate ships would make better time and better profit to go through Panama and unload at one of the Gulf state ports.