The big trucker strike at Port of Oakland is entering it’s second week with half of Asia, especially Japan, screaming “where’s the beef?” Those nice juicy chilled cuts of red meat, which pacific rim diners are willing to shell big bucks out for, will have to be frozen. American shippers are going to take a huge hit in the wallet.
Asia wants their beef red
Asians want their beef red and juicy and they’re willing to shell out big bucks for it. American ranchers love to sell it to them. The only problem is that the nanny state of California decided to protect independent truckers right out of existence.
Federal Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg is much more interested in defending gay marriage than keeping the freight zipping around. Right now, nothing is moving in or out at the Port of Oakland. Nothing will move, the truckers insist, until the onerous law goes away. If the governor won’t budge, neither will the cargo.
Protesters shut the port down cold because port workers refuse to cross the picket lines. That blocks all the cargo. On Monday, July 25, the longshoreman’s union told everyone to take another day off. Negotiations appear at a stalemate. That’s not a good thing for the beef industry.
According to Meat Export Federation President and CEO Dan Halstrom, “A prolonged shutdown could have a dramatic impact on U.S. red meat exports and [agriculture] exports as a whole.” Oakland, he notes, “is the third-busiest port on the West Coast and the largest outlet for U.S. red meat exports.” Not last week. This week is looking grim, too.
“The operations of the Port of Oakland are virtually at a standstill.” The issue, Halstrom explains, “is that independent truckers continue to protest the state of California’s labor rules.”
Everything was fine until the liberals wanted the truckers to be paid overtime and get benefits. The companies can’t afford that so would have to fire drivers. Longshore workers are standing in solidarity by refusing to cross the truckers’ picket line. Beef exporters are feeling the worst pain, right now.
Frozen meat chills sales
“Some of our biggest markets are Japan, Korea, China and Taiwan,” Halstrom points out. Japan specifically consumes “roughly 66% of the beef exports and maybe 70% of the pork exports” which sail out from the Port of Oakland.
The ongoing congestion and unreliability at the West Coast ports has already prompted a shift from chilled to more frozen product. That’s not a good thing. It may have a longer shelf life but “doesn’t carry the premium value of chilled meat.” If the Oakland shutdown continues, the results will be drastic.
“Some of the highest margin business is the chilled product.” That makes it “very time sensitive on the shelf life.” What’s going to happen, he says, is “if this cargo cannot ship on time, a lot of this cargo is going to have to be frozen down which means prices will plummet.”
Beef is something which simply “has to ship chilled,” Halstrom declares. “That’s the value-added opportunity.”
Quite a bit of value gets added, too. In a market like Japan, “last year it was a little over $4 billion worth of exports, $2.4 billion on beef and $1.7 billion on pork.” It’s easy to see why the entire industry calls that their “No. 1 value destination.” Only though, because they can “ship high value, chilled product.”
That’s why it’s so important for woke officials like Gavin Newsom to wake up and smell the coffee. That’s another thing not moving through Oakland. “It’s essential that the state of California officials get together to intervene and come to some sort of resolution not only for meat, for beef and pork, but for a lot of different agricultural commodities throughout the nation.“
