cyan79
Graphic Designer
- November 21, 2008 • 4:44 am PST
- + responses
LONG BEACH, Calif. - Gleaming new Mercedes cars roll one by one out of
a huge container ship here and onto a pier. Ordinarily the cars would
be loaded on trucks within hours, destined for dealerships around the
country. But these are not ordinary times.
For now, the port itself is the destination. Unwelcome by dealers and buyers, thousands of cars worth tens of millions of dollars are being warehoused on increasingly crowded port property.
And for the first time, Mercedes-Benz, Toyota,
and Nissan have each asked to lease space from the port for these
orphan vehicles. They are turning dozens of acres of the nation's
second-largest container port into a parking lot, creating a vivid
picture of a paralyzed auto business and an economy in peril.
The
backlog at the port is just part of a broader rise in the nation's
inventories, which were up 5.5 percent in September from a year
earlier, according to the Commerce Department. The car industry has
been hurt particularly, with sales down nearly 15 percent this year. General Motors has said it would run out of operating cash by the end of the year if it does not receive a government bailout.
But
the inventory glut in Long Beach is not limited to imported cars. There
has also been a sharp drop in demand for the port's single largest
export: recycled cardboard and paper products.
typically goes to China, where it is used to make boxes for new
electronics and other products that are sent back to the United States.
But Chinese factories reacting to sharply falling demand are slowing
production, so they need less cardboard. Tons of paper are piling up
recycling businesses around the port, the detritus of economies on hold.
Long Beach is an important port, particularly for the West. It is where
imported products arrive and filter through the tributary of trucks,
trains and retailers into the hands of consumers. But now, products are
just sitting...
Complete Article: NY Times
