From New Orleans, the August 28th Greg Flakus report tells us that:

“Gary LaGrange, President and Chief Executive Officer of the port, says there was an initial lag in activity in the weeks following Katrina, but since then business has picked up dramatically …

“A key factor in the port’s increased activity over the past year has been steel and rubber shipments coming from various parts of the world. Gary LaGrange says the steel imports reflect both the decline of steel production in the United States and increased demand for steel by various US industries. ‘We have the automotive industry, we have the appliance industry, the construction industry,’ he said. ‘That steel has got to come from somewhere. In large part it is now coming from Japan, China, also Brazil and Russia, to a degree.’…”

We talked about dumb strategies on the part of politicians, economists and logisticians in our most recent commentary, but the way we’re dealing with the steel shortage in the U.S. takes the cake. Back in Article 39 of Volume VII, a commentary we entitled, “Shipwrecked”, we cited a U.S. Navy photo in the “Virginia Pilot”. Just below were the words: “The bow of the 563-foot, 7,800 ton destroyer Stump points skyward as the ship sinks into the ocean June 7 after being damaged in a military exercise off the North Carolina coast.”

The story out of Norfolk went on to say: “The Navy sank two of its retired Spruance-class destroyers in a day of surface and air warfare training about 275 miles off the North Carolina coast sending the largest destroyers ever built to the dark ocean floor 12,000 feet below. The guided-missile destroyers Comte de Grasse and Stump, both 28 years old and once based in Norfolk, were felled June 7, the Navy acknowledged this week.”

Our remarks noted the rising price of steel, the out-of-sight shipbuilding costs, and the fact that, “the U.S. government now ordains, however, that steel in 7,800 chunks should be used for target practice and sent to the bottom of the sea … a disaster in another form … an economic disaster”.

“A new destroyer,” we recalled, “costs well over a billion dollars, but … ho-hum … the taxpayer can afford it”… and we concluded by asking why “the taxpayer can’t afford to build (and sell!) profit-making container ships?”

Do any of these events make sense? The American consumer pays for everything … the foreign-built, gargantuan container ships … the “infrastructure” upgrading required because those massive ships are able to access but a handful of ports … the ever-increasing container fees imposed so that traffic congestion and air quality problems caused by those inflexible ships can be addressed …

Here’s what would make sense. There’s an economic war being waged and we’re on the short end. We should be revitalizing our shipyards (again), and building container ships that would have access to our many smaller ports. Be assured … that’s a war we’d win.