Big Picture

Long Beach

Los Angeles, USA

Container ports globally remain gridlocked, Bloomberg’s Port Congestion Tracker shows. It’s been a perfect storm for shipping: the pandemic; an unprecedented e-commerce boom; the Suez canal blockage; and a lack of lorry drivers to service onward journeys. There’s now so much idling port traffic that it’s visible from space. In a recent NASA Earth Observatory photo, the coast off Long Beach in LA resembles an aquatic car park. The problem’s so bad, that US President Joe Biden has urged the port to run 24/7.

NASA Earth Observatory

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