So shipping costs on consumers is going to go astonishing high in the future?
Yep.
You're gonna see hyper inflation in the next few months like you've never seen it in our lifetimes.
Literally everything we consume is influenced by China. If you look around your house and office, chances are, it was either comletely made in China, made with components that came from China, or is made on equipment that comes from China that needs to be maintained or replaced. That shirt you're wearing that says "MADE IN VIETNAM?" Gets shipped through Chinese ports. That DeMarini bat you bought your kid that says "MADE IN USA?" Made in the USA with a plastic end cap, grip tape, decals, and paint that all came over here on a boat from China.
The reason you haven't seen shit get wild yet is because there's a lag between each step in the OEM --> distributor --> dealer/store --> end user chain. Once the OEM raises prices, each step down the line raises prices the same amount (or they go out of business), but the next step down has some amount of inventory to work through before they raise theirs.
For example lets say I import brake pads....
If I raise my prices by 25% the distributor I'm selling to does the same, but they might have 3 months of inventory to work through at old pricing before they raise theirs. Once the price increase makes it's way to the dealer/store level, they might have say, 4 weeks of inventory at their warehouse. But eventually it's gonna hit at the retail level, so watch the F out, my man. That TV you wanna buy next year is gonna cost $1,100 instead of $650. And I'm not exaggerating. International shipping costs are past low earth orbit and headed for Mars. The charts look like the walls of the Grand Canyon (google the FBX and Drewry indices if you wanna get depressed).
Bulky, inexpensive stuff is already feeling it here stateside. You're gonna see furniture stores (100% importers no matter what they say) drop like flies in the next year. Here's the deal with that stuff...you can google this as well...
Let's say you want to go to Ashley or wherever and by a couch. Every...single...one...of those pieces of furniture (unless you're buying ultra, ultra high end stuff) is made in China. Let's also make it simple and say that couch costs the furniture chain over here $300 each, and a container of 20 couches coming across the pond costs $5,000 to ship from China to Omaha (5 grand was the going rate 8 months ago). So now you've got $550 cost wrapped up in a couch ($300 EA + $250 to ship) and you sell it for say $650 to make a profit.
Well, right now that same container of couches costs you north of $30,000 to get to your door. That's $1,500 fucking dollars EACH COUCH just to get it here, which is five times the actual price of the thing when you bought it from the sweatshop. No one's going to pay $2,100 for a shitty Chinese couch that used to be $650. So, the companies try to do some funny math and sell at lower prices, but at the end of the day the numbers can't be moved around anymore and they go belly up. This is going to happen, my friend. It's
when, not
if. Big, bulky stuff isn't feasible to ship anymore because the container rate costs the same whether you ship 10 of somehting or 100,000 of something as long as it weighs less than 20,000 KG
Also keep in mind that my example above doesn't take into account the fact that 1) you can't even get a container anyway, and 2) the cost of the couch itself is going up too...
