Economic chaos underway, consumers see it, the numbers tell the story.

 

There are fewer ships on the oceans today than a couple of months ago, a disturbing data point on the economy.

That’s thanks to the U.S. Administration’s chaotic tariff posture.

It seems clear that in the coming weeks, the Administration’s turbulent economic posture  will translate to significantly higher prices. And also dramatically less inventory available to American consumers.

Consumers see it coming. Consumer sentiment has dropped to a historic low.

The value of the U.S. dollar against foreign currencies has dropped, meaning everything we buy from aboard costs more, and when we travel, our money buys less. 

Investors Business Daily has a report today that China-to-North American shipping cancellations have reached 50%. 

Right now, container unloading in U.S. ports is higher than normal, due to a rush of advance orders meant to beat the tariffs. But the coming drop in shipping arrivals will far outpace the temporary increase.

“Major ports like Los Angeles and Long Beach have recently seen increased activity as companies rushed goods before new tariffs. However, forward bookings indicate falling demand,” reports the British firm Containerlift. 

Those kinds of drops in cargo volume will economically hit American ports, trucking companies and trains before they impact store shelves and eventually consumers.

It is not just imports to the U.S., but also exports from the U.S. American farmers are hit extremely hard. In the week of April 11-17, according to the USDA, pork exports were down 72%, soy down 50%, corn down 26%, cotton down 49%, beef down 41%. A few exports (rice, sorghum) were up, but the trend was way down.

The World Trade Organization (WTO) anticipates by the end of the year a 12.6% drop in North American exports.

U.S. manufacturing is down, and there are thousands of layoffs at manufacturing plants.

None of this is good for our country.

But other countries will continue to trade with each other without the direct impact of the American trade tariffs. That’s why, although the global economy is expected to be hit by the American trade chaos, it will be hit far less severely than the U.S. and its biggest direct trading partners.

The WTO is estimating worldwide merchandise trade to take just a .2% hit. 

© Jan TenBruggencate 2025

Wrapping up the shot-down balloons story: Yes, balloons can crash planes

 We may not learn a whole lot more about the four objects shot down during February 2023 by American jets, other than they appeared to all be balloons carrying some sort of payload.

The first was a Chinese-owned giant balloon that drifted across North America from Alaska to North Carolina, where it was shot down February 4 after it passed the coast into the Atlantic. As best we know, it had surveillance equipment on board, multiple antennas, and presumably the capacity to track and report on U.S. communications. 

U.S. intelligence agencies tracked it from takeoff in south China, all the way to its downing off the Carolinas. We assume that we were able to gather significant intelligence from it while it operated, and more after most of it was recovered from the Atlantic. 

Three more balloons were shot down over the coastal ice in Alaska February 10, the forests of the Yukon in Canada February 11 and over the waters of Lake Huron February 12.

News reports indicate all three of them were most likely very small “pico balloons,” which are much smaller than the Chinese balloon, hard to track on radar, and which normally carry miniature payloads. One standard for these balloons is to carry transceivers that allow ham radio operators to communicate with them, or to transmit messages to them to be retransmitted to other radio operators.

None of the three small balloons was recovered, but an Illinois radio and balloon hobbyist group said the Canadian object was probably theirs.

The Northern Illinois Bottlecap Balloon Brigade said it might have been one of their mylar balloons, with the call sign K9Y0. It had been up for half a year, and had circled the globe nearly seven times. They don’t know for sure that the Yukon object, but they said it stopped transmitting about the time of the reported destruction of an object by a U.S. Fighter’s rocket. Aviation Week reported on it here. 

There may be dozens of similar balloons orbiting our planet at any time, on top of the weather balloons, corporate spy balloons, hot air balloons, party balloons, and nations’ spy balloons. In all, this Scientific American article says there may be hundreds to thousands up over the U.S. at any given time. 

Some have radio transponders so aircraft can detect them, some are reflective so they show up clearly on radar, but some are ghostly hard to detect, yet still dangerous to an aircraft that might suck one into its engine or around its control surfaces.

While plane-balloon interactions are rare, they have occurred. Most result in only minor damage to the plane, as when this Air Canada flight took out a weather balloon in 2019. https://simpleflying.com/air-canada-weather-ballon-collision.

But some have caused crashes.

Forty-five people were killed in a 1970s Russian crash after a propellor plane hit a weather balloon. 

In California in 1994, a twin-engine Piper Comanche went down, killing its pilot, after it apparently hit party balloons. 

In 2007 a Cessna lost a wing after hitting the tether line for an inflatable airship. 

And there are near misses, as when this Qatar Airlines Boeing jet managed to dodge a large balloon over Brazil last year. 

© Jan TenBruggencate 2023

COVID-19: Kaua`i has its first confirmed cases, and debunking fake news--folks, the barges are still coming

Kaua`i today was confirmed to have its first active cases of COVID-19, in a tourist couple who are being kept in isolation.

The couple is at an undisclosed site overseen by Kaua`i County and being monitored by the state Department of Health. The case is being managed according to protocols set up in advance in anticipation of the event.

The confirmation, which was announced in a mass email from Kaua`i County a couple of hours after midnight, was based on testing of the couple performed yesterday (Friday, March 13, 2020).

Meanwhile, the stateʻs epidemic rumor mill continues to churn.

One of the most active rumors, that cargo to the island is being disrupted, has spawned new runs on supplies.

"I have never seen Costco so full. They had lines snaking away from the checkout counters, some of them all the way back to the pharmacy," one friend told me Friday afternoon.

At Safeway, two women asked me whether it was true that Young Brothers barges have been blocked from coming. Others reported rumors that the harbors have been closed.

None of that is true. I talked to store officials, who insist their supply lines are intact, and harbors and shipping officials. Food and toilet paper are still making their ways to the island. 

What the panic buying and hoarding has done is move supplies from store shelves, where people can get them as needed, into peoplesʻ home larders, where excess supplies are not available to people in need.

Matson took the step of issuing a press release in response to the rumors: 

“Matson intends to maintain all service schedules as normal with three arrivals a week to Honolulu and twice a week calls to each neighbor island port.

Young Brothers, the inter-island barge service, issued its own statement:   

"There are currently NO changes to sailing schedule or cargo acceptance at all ports. YB will continue to monitor COVID-19 and its impact to the State."

© Jan TenBruggencate 2020