Gene Seroka on What’s Happening Now at the Port of LA

Joe Weisenthal (0:10)

Hello, and welcome to another episode of the Odd Lots Podcast. I'm Joe Weisenthal.

Tracy Alloway (0:17)

And I'm Tracy Alloway.

Joe Weisenthal (0:19)

Tracy, it seems like there are some tentative signs out there of easing global supply chains.

Tracy Alloway (0:26)

Yes and no. I keep seeing a mixed bag. And also, I mean, we kind of have to talk in terms of geographies as well. So I know Bloomberg Economics literally just hit the button on a piece of research saying that there seem to be some signs of improvement in the US and Europe, but in places like the UK.,

things are just getting worse. But of course, even in the US., there's a lot of debate over what exactly it is we're seeing and what we should be looking at in terms of judging whether or not things are actually getting better.

Joe Weisenthal (0:57)

Right, there is not like one supply chain index or one measure of prices or one measure of shipping time that can give us the answer. There's clearly a lot of different moving parts to all this. And so at this point, I think maybe it's safe to say things aren't still getting worse, I think, generally speaking with, at least in the US.,

but whether things are like sustainably getting better, whether packages and containers are moving through our system faster, still feels kind of ambiguous.

Tracy Alloway (1:28)

Yeah, I think that's right.

Joe Weisenthal (1:31)

And of course, we recently spoke with the White House's envoy to the port, John Porcari, and the White House itself has been putting out some blog posts and some stats saying, look at this improvement, and then other pieces of data say that improvement is a mirage. So yeah, I think we've sort of established just a lot of questions still out there.

Tracy Alloway (1:53)

I think that's right. And also when we spoke to Porcari, we said we were going to have to check in on the other side of all of this, which is with the actual port of Los Angeles, the White House, the Biden administration has been working with and see how things are actually going from their perspective.

Joe Weisenthal (2:09)

Well, that is what we're doing today. And so I'm very delighted.

We spoke to him back over the summer. We're going to be speaking again for an update on the situation at the Port of Los Angeles. Gene Seroka, the Executive Director at the Port of Los Angeles, thank you so much for coming on Odd Lots.

Gene Seroka (2:25)

Good to be here, Joe and Tracy, thank you.

Joe Weisenthal (2:28)

Thank you so much. So why don't you just give us this sort of very big picture, how things look today. We're recording this December 13th, or the last time we had you on, it was early August. Why don't you give us a little bit of a comparison between what's going on right now and then?

Gene Seroka (2:43)

Well, if we talked back in the summertime late summer and folks told me that we would be nearing and surpassing the all-time record for holiday sales, according to the National Retail Federation, and had a chance to also simultaneously break the all-time record for retail sales in the country, I think there'd be a lot of skeptics led by me.

But that appears to be where we're headed right now. Now behind that, there are a lot of storylines, there are nuanced effects, there are so many variables in each equation. There's a lot to unwrap here on today's podcast, but happy to be with you both.

Tracy Alloway (3:25)

So what is it that you're watching now in terms of actually judging how much you're moving through the port? Because we had this conversation with Porcari a little while ago.

We were talking, for instance, about the number of ships that are wading off the coast, and he was emphasizing that we should all be looking at throughput and the number of actual containers that are moving through the port. So from that perspective, how are things going?

Gene Seroka (3:52)

Sure, I think we've gained some traction in a number of areas, but in all sincerity, it's like a game of whack-a-mole. You do a couple of things pretty well as a supply chain, and no one individual or no one entity is pulling every lever, as you both well know. But soon as something gets a little bit more traction or on better footing, something else jumps up, and you have to approach it right away too. So looking at what we have been doing, I'll give you a couple of indicators. One, the number of idle containers sitting on the port's marine terminals has decreased by 60% since October 24th. And that's when we first started discussing with the industry the potential of levying a penalty for the aging containers sitting on our docks.