Global Trade This Week – December 14th, 2022
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Keenan Brugh 0:00
You're watching Global Trade This Week with Pete Mento and Doug Draper.
Pete Mento 0:10
Well, hey, everybody, and welcome to Global Trade This Week and I'm sure you're wondering why there's a yeti on with me. Why the Abominable Snowman, where the Sasquatch in his jaunty little scarf is sitting next to me instead of my usual writer die. Doug Draper. Doug is what does he say usually on assignment when I'm not
Keenan Brugh 0:34
on assignment in Fresno, California.
Pete Mento 0:36
Oh man, I've been to Fresno you know what kind of like Fresno people give Fresno crap. I've had a lot of fun there, Keenan. Doug is not with us. And so that means that Wonderboy producer, Keenan is going to be joining us today he didn't How are you my friend?
Keenan Brugh 0:51
I'm doing well. You know, being a natural Yeti, I would prefer to be up in the mountains snowboarding today. But you know, there's a good reason to be here in civilization, speaking with you and all of our listeners here today.
Pete Mento 1:05
Yeah, just just out of curiosity, right? Your guy who lives in the greater Mountain West, whatever the Christ? How many? How many days? Do you think in the course of the ski season? Do you actually get out to a mountain ski?
Keenan Brugh 1:23
I try as much as I can. I have a full time job. So it's, you know, not a full time thing for me. I believe my girlfriend did 50 days last year, I probably only hit 2732. Somewhere in that region. So quite a lot. I am grateful. It's one of those with the economics, we get a pass and then the more you go, the cheaper it gets. So
Pete Mento 1:46
question. So for that much outdoor activity. What does this pass cost you buddy? Is that a lot of money?
Keenan Brugh 1:54
So they've gone up over the years? Definitely. But what is it if you buy it early? It's significant. So I was buy mine in the spring. So I'd say roughly $500. But then if you split that up amongst quite a few days, it's much cheaper than getting individual day rate pass passes, for sure.
Pete Mento 2:14
So can you want to look this up when I was a young man and I moved to New Hampshire. My parents and I had a nice little house not far from where I live now. Like I could literally, I mean, it would take me it would take me not even eight minutes to walk to my my, my boyhood home, here in Manchester. And from my boyhood home in Manchester, the the learning slope, like the municipal ski slope for New Hampshire was another not even 10 minute walk. So I had the 1980 ski tow you know, you put your skis in it, and your boots and your poles and you can carry your stuff. And I learned how to ski in a place called McIntyre, which is I'm pretty sure it was a garbage dump. But um, I'm not positive, I think covered up.
Unknown Speaker 3:05
That's where the elevation came from.
Pete Mento 3:08
We had images, lots of mountains, right? So you think but they had a rope tow. And it had one, one ski lift. And there was a bunny slope where I legitimately learned to slope doing french fries, pizza, french fries, pizza. And then there were there were two, there were two ski slopes. One was a little more difficult than the other but honestly man, it wasn't that difficult at all. And I paid $50 for an all season pass. And because all my friends live in the neighborhood, we would ski I mean pretty much every day. And I do read every day like we will go Monday through Sunday and then we ski at night. And and then on weekends because my friend Shawn tolls more like my brother than my friend his parents had a house up north, you know, we we'd ski on the weekends in the nicer places which compared to Colorado, ski is up here. We ski a lot and and I remember it was a big deal that I would pay like 20 bucks for a day pass at a relatively expensive but now McIntyre has a tubing run. So one of those runs now. You go up there and you sit on an inner tube and you skip down your butt on an inner tube in they've got a bar. It's more of a you know, Winter Wonderland for family friendly fun than when I was a boy Kenan. So I'm planning on going there once we had our first snow of the year here this week. Not a lot. Not a lot drop, buddy. But yeah, I'm looking forward to doing some to have and I have not gone skiing in a couple of years. But I think this year I'll probably have gone.
Keenan Brugh 4:57
I would encourage you to do so. It's a great reason to Get outside, get some fresh cold air on your face exercise. We're in the same boat. We just were supposed to get a bunch of snow here in the city of Denver did not so disappointed there, but at least I think some landed in the mountains, which is helpful because that's where all the skiing is $50 for a season pass sounds awesome. I know we've had inflation since then. But at the same time, I think independent of inflation, ski prices have just been going up continually, year after year. So it's one of those things that anything you can do to to make it more cost effective or get up there as much as you can. That's the way to do it.
Pete Mento 5:35
Yeah, we're talking 1985, buddy, when? For Christmas, I got my ski package. Everything so boots, Poles bindings, everything. It was $169. Wow. Yeah. And that was
Unknown Speaker 5:49
my time. That was not cheap.
Pete Mento 5:51
for mom and dad my toe. That was they definitely, they definitely scrimped and saved for that. And I'm sure that I was an ungrateful little jerk. But I was still happy to have have skis. Yeah, so it's gotta be tough
Keenan Brugh 6:05
watching kids. Yeah. We're watching kids. What? Watching kids like not make the most of a ski day. It's a powder day. You do all the expenses, the traveling to get up there. And then I remember when I was learning how to ski like, I didn't know what I was doing, you know, also not a big mountain. It's just ice and everything. But yeah,
Pete Mento 6:24
I mentioned this the other day on a call for snow days, when we would have snow days in New Hampshire. I'm sure Colorado is the same way. We will wait for it on WM EUR. And there was a Trinity High School, right? No, no, no school today. And you would call your buddies. You see, you know, who's who's home. You pack up your craft, and you would drive farther north where the snow is even worse. And you would ski all day. Like okay, so this, it's the snow is too bad for me to drive into school. But it's not so bad that we can get in our rear wheel drive car. Because, again, 80s Yeah, and I will admit Kenan, we were probably a little drunk or a little high, either there or coming back and see all day, like, okay, that's fine, but we either get on a bus or drive ourselves to school. That's just looking back on it. It was just absurd that that was the case. And now it seems like they never get snow days ever, like ever, ever, ever, ever. I think you know, out of four kids I can probably count on both hands how many snow days they got over the course of their school. So I've seen
Keenan Brugh 7:35
that too. There's there's less snow days these days than there used to be for sure.
Pete Mento 7:38
Squirrel. There will be more talk about this stupid scarf you're wearing by the way I don't want on here are you are you are either a French model or a jihadi like I don't know which one it is.
Keenan Brugh 7:51
I'm actually I'm going more Nepali Gurkha got this in Nepal. So it's like pashmina cashmere. I don't really know my walls.
Pete Mento 8:01
Dropping when I was in Nepal, just dropping back when I was in Nepal. I picked this up when I was in Nepal.
Keenan Brugh 8:09
That'll be a story for another time. But since we're getting into the show, I'll kick us off here with the the first topic I want us to discuss about, saw this last night, some interesting news coming out of China, about China doing their own version of a chips act where they are planning on spending 1 trillion plus you won renminbi equivalent of about 143 billion US dollars in order to subsidize and support their own domestic semiconductor manufacturing industry. So from what I've been reading, this is all kind of still in development. Nothing official, but it's just you know, sources who are not authorized to say or kind of saying stuff. And it could be happening as early as q1 This next year 2023. And it could be very large, obviously, it's a lot of money. But they're really working on incentivizing the building of the manufacturing capability. So up to 20% of any purchases on the equipment that makes semiconductors. So we'll see where this all goes. It's kind of fitting into the larger picture of trade tensions, political tensions, kind of in my mind related to things like spying and the Huawei situation. I know that executive that was in Canada facing extradition just had charges dropped. So they're kind of making friendly progress there. But at the same time, the US seems to be lobbying various allies and partners in Europe to stop buying Huawei and or other Chinese chips for fears of spying and or for fears of losing business to China. And it also kind of reminds me of the topic you brought up a while ago about the A RM arm where they had legally all of their IP just kind of jacked because of the 5149 Joint Venture situations and who holds the stamp and where that's all going so, Arn China's a totally separate company now it seems from the actual British multinational. Yeah, things are kind of heating up. So I don't know if you saw this news or if you have any other insights on chip manufacturing and kind of the the race to the future of economics, because everything has chips, and more and more things will. And so it's a pretty big important piece of the economy that people are battling over right now.
Pete Mento 10:30
Yeah, it's a big topic, and that China has always strived intro for strived strive, as always strive to have independence and have in the vertical supply chain. So the ability to not have a need to depend on anyone else, they identified it early on in the 90s, it's something they really wanted to focus on. So the plan was by 2025, for 18 specific industries to not have a need to depend on what they consider to be, you know, an aggressive, an aggravated actor in anything, then that includes Taiwan, you know, who, eventually even if they go into a shooting war with Taiwan, they would have to deal with that. So it just makes sense, if you look at their larger economic strategy, that they would do something like this. Now, I wonder if this has so much to do with a fear of irrational fear of being concerned about how they, they deal with trade tensions, as it does to try to serve a broader domestic market without having to depend on the rest of the world? I don't know. It's one way to look at it. I think another is, China understands that their broader domestic consumption is going to continue to explode when I'm able to control it. And I think also that they're very concerned about what's going to be continued tensions with the rest of the world over the legit adoption of technology from other countries. And when you see a world where you know, the section 337 possible absolute sanctions can be put in place, when you begin to see more and more legal actions being taken against China for the Gambia. Legit, I have to keep saying that. Legit adoption of other people's technologies. It's just it's smart strategy. And as much as it makes Americans angry when I say this, China has generally outmaneuvered us when it comes to legal wrangling, and this could be a play for the outmaneuver us again.
Keenan Brugh 12:34
Yeah, that's a great point you bring up I hadn't considered as much they are definitely going to become a pretty large consumer themselves domestically, have cell phones and Internet of Things type technology. So there's going to be that demand there. And just like paranoid people in Washington don't want Huawei spying on them. They probably don't want foreign actors spying on them through that. So it's intelligent from that perspective. And you also brought up Taiwan, which, you know, recently had things with Nancy Pelosi and all that. I don't follow kind of the geopolitical war stuff super closely. But I did see something about China flexing and flying some nuclear capable, like planes really close or maybe over the line in Taiwan. So that's kind of heating up there, too.
Pete Mento 13:18
Yeah. Well, I think we'll have more to talk about this as the days go by this is this is not going to this is not going to end just by tomorrow, but my first topic is, you know, the what is what is the harbinger of good news in global ocean shipping and maritime? Well, it's always bad news. That's what it is, buddy. It's your there is no good meal in marine transportation without heartburn. You can't dig. It's always binging, you know, binge and purge, binge, purge, boom and bust boom and bust. And we have watched over the past three years, ocean carriers, despite their business practices make so much money. And if you look at the most of the press, with regards to their business, which you will usually see is people saying they're going to weather the storm, they have so much cash now. Nothing to worry about. There will be massive layoffs, and I tend to disagree. And the reason for that is much of the money that they earn has been earmarked to things like buying new ships, has been earmarked into acquisitions, mergers. It's been earmarked into buying, buying infrastructure. It's been spent on buying back stock. It's been spent on huge bonuses. I don't know if they've learned the lessons of the past, because now All the king's horses and all the king's men aren't going to put Humpty Dumpty back in when there is no volume. So we're seeing already all of this volume going to the east coast. It's kept rates relatively steady. But the West Coast rates are deflated, at best, positively in the toilet at worst, and once is a West Coast decision, and we have that issue taken care of yet it's gonna get a little better, but the rest of the world isn't getting any better anytime sooner. And there will be a double dip recession, what happened was a recession, we're going to have another one. And with that is going to be a correction another correction to rates? Did these ocean carriers make enough of a move towards blank sailings? Do they do enough with EG to take taking ships out of service? Are they going to scrap enough vessels in order for them to maintain the type of of profitability that's going to keep their shareholders happy? And I don't know that they have. And I think there's going to be some people losing their jobs, there's going to be some expectations by the boards, and by shareholders to do something about this. Because once people have gotten used to making a lot of money on these shares, expect that that gravy train keeps going.
Keenan Brugh 15:59
I think you're absolutely right. You know, people who own those shares, they constantly have to make those decisions of where they're going to put their capital. And if it's no longer as profitable, they might just move over to a different industry different investment opportunity. And you bring up you know, there's been cycles of boom and bust and high profits, low profits. But it seems to me that this has been a more dramatic one and a lot faster. So they did capture higher rates for a while. But then that didn't last all that long. And now all of a sudden, they're going to be going in a different direction. And yeah, that money, like you mentioned has been spent or earmarked elsewhere, there's probably going to be some turmoil.
Pete Mento 16:39
There are people who are wondering right now can't Will there be a bankruptcy. And that just seems so counterintuitive, the last couple of years, the ocean carriers, they were telling us how we're going to spend our money to move cargo on their ships, and they were very defiant about it. And, you know, I make no excuses over the fact that I think ocean carriers need to make money because it's, it's safer for marriages, first of all, and second of all, we need them to be healthy. So that we have choices to make, the fewer carriers that are out there, the less choices you're going to have. It's going to it's going to increase the cost of everything, we want to have a good healthy mix of carriers to go toward. But the idea that they're going to be fewer of them because of their own decisions that they're making about what to do with those profits. That's terrifying. It's terrifying. But in any case, this is the part of the show that I normally take a shot at Kenan but I've taken enough today. It's halftime brought to you by our good friends at CAP logistics who make the show happen. They they allow us to take some of Kenyans valuable time every week to produce the show, and we're very thankful for it. If you'd like to learn more about capital logistics and the services they provide please do check them out at cap logistics.com. And it's time for halftime. Now I talked to cue bit about my topic this week. And I've got strong feelings about this one. So it is the holiday season. And there are very specific traditional seasonal waivers that people are into I myself am very much a chocolate and peppermint kind of guy. Big fan year round. But there are people who this time of year go absolutely wacko over eggnog and eggnog makes me wreck. So not only are people drinking the eggnog but they put the eggnog flavor in every so we'll give you some examples of this quinoa makes me so angry. There is eggnog ice cream, which is wrong. There are numerous eggnog flavored coffee options that one can get like eggnog cream with your cold brew coffee. There is eggnog chocolate. So it's a chocolate with some kind of eggnog flavor inside of it. There are economic frostings that are going on cookies eggnog is everywhere. It might be the pumpkin spice and whoever did this needs to be waterboarded now there are other fine things that should be drank. First of all hot chocolate hot chocolate is the this is the time for the hot chocolate over the weekend. Oldest daughter had her man friend to come visit her I did not shoot him bury him. So congratulations to me. But they were they were drinking spiced rum. The Captain Morgan spiced rum in there I thought maybe wicker could save this. It didn't. But you know there are there are holiday drinks that have wicker in them. There are rumble mints with some hot cocoa to winter, no matter how you slice it and I know you're going to talk about one as well that I'm a big fan of from the Germanic traditions. And I just think honestly man, Gingerbread, fabulous drink, you know, the gingerbread schnapps so that you can put in with all sorts of things. Kenan, I'm gonna say it man the eggnog thing is just stay in its lane.
Keenan Brugh 20:08
I'll agree with you. It shouldn't be applied as a flavor to other things like I like spice pumpkin pie but spice pumpkin should not be applied to every coffee creamer etc, etc. That's just out of place. I agree there shouldn't be eggnog flavored this and that and everything. But actual eggnog is delicious, whether just straight up or with alcohol either way, it's delicious. It's kind of in the name, but maybe not always known. Eggnog has raw eggs in it. I absolutely love the taste of raw eggs. Like it's a different thing, but it's kind of like doing something you're not supposed to. That's delicious. Like eating raw cookie dough. Oh, delicious.
Pete Mento 20:46
Well, you lose by wolves. What is wrong with you man? Raw raw eggs are delicious.
Unknown Speaker 20:54
Eggs. Oh, yeah. Rocks. Great. Yeah.
Pete Mento 20:58
Rocky, do you know that scene?
Keenan Brugh 21:00
That I'm assuming he drinks eggs as a part of his training montage.
Pete Mento 21:04
You have never seen rocky Have you seen it? No, I
Keenan Brugh 21:07
have not. I have I have seen Team America World Police where they've referenced Rocky and everyone. Every great film has a montage. Even Rocky has a montage. So that's about as close as I am on that.
Pete Mento 21:21
Rocky is an excellent film. So this is a one on one a Oscar for the writing the script. And it's an excellent story in believing in yourself because nobody wanted to make the film. And then they wanted to make the film but they didn't want him to play Rocky. And he says
Keenan Brugh 21:35
he wasn't big on time. Right? Like he was kind of like just no name. Yes. Yeah.
Pete Mento 21:40
Was his first real big film. You really ought to watch it from that perspective of this is a no one who wrote a film and had it done. And then it became a massive I mean massive hit. And it's you know it you can see it coming from a mile away. But it's it's so obvious everything about it. But yes, when rocky who's just nobody Palooka gets an opportunity for the fight of his life. He part of his training regimen is he gets up in the morning and drink some pile of raw eggs and in the 70s there were all these guys that were like you know, whenever you get ready drinking these raw eggs and murder. Yeah, just the idea that makes me want to hurl
Keenan Brugh 22:21
having chickens in my backyard right now. I can say fresh raw eggs are delicious. Big fan. Going on to other drinks. I think we also agree on the hot chocolate in general, and can have a little rumpled mints, but I think it's better just straight. And then I think we also agree on this other traditional classic Christmas drink. mulled wine is something you don't drink the rest of the year. I drink hot chocolate all the time. But mulled wine is a seasonal thing that I am looking forward to.
Pete Mento 22:51
Yes. Being surrounded by people of German descent bluevine glue you know, on on, Norman, North northern people, you know, Nordic people, they're very big into it. There's usually a pot of it. You know, when you go to their home, always warm. It is fabulous. And it tastes excellent. It's usually not the best wine. But it tastes fantastic Once you clean it up. And you know if you're walking around in a German Christmas market in Germany, it's what it reminds me of. So when I'm sitting on the couch, you know watching reruns of modern family with my crappy not real tree because I live in a frickin apartment. It's the smell of it reminds me of Christmas not the pine smell not that that is my Christmas smells will buy and then it reminds me of a fabulous Christmas time I have my friend Richard who is in London he works for Expeditors and he took me to a Christmas market back in the 90s and I bought a bunch of Christmas arms and such walking around drinking bluevine And he was just a fabulous fabulous English Christmas so yeah keen and who vine is positively wonderful as is rum hot toddies which again, I've really only seen them on menus in either New England or over in England I really soon to be other places.
Keenan Brugh 24:12
Great discussion. I'm looking forward to all the beverages we will be enjoying this holiday season. I'll have to try some some new ones I haven't had in a while and definitely the old classics for
Pete Mento 24:23
sure. Alright, so on to Topic number two my friend. Yeah, so
Keenan Brugh 24:27
Topic number two, I wanted to bring up just even for my own self as well as some of our customers have been asking about the recent US rail strike and the strike out so to speak where, you know, they didn't come to an agreement they were going to strike and then using the power of Congress and collaboration left right Democrat Republican executive branch everyone kind of teamed up saying we can't afford economically to have rail actually stop. But then I didn't really hear a lot of new It was after the fact. So I was trying to dig in and just see kind of where we are what's going on. Seems like a lot of people are unhappy. You know, we kept logistics don't do a ton of intermodal rail specific when we get involved with rail, it's for custom oversize removing large factory equipment. But rail does a lot of what should be very consistent what should be very cost effective type logistics. And that impacts us in cap using trucks and airplanes and all the rest of the freight market as well as just the rest of the economy, consumers using anything from coal or move, like buying things of FedEx that gets put on a train and all this. And so was trying to just read more, I don't think we have all the answers yet. But I'm just trying to understand. It didn't seem to me that the unions were asking for all that much of a pay raise. It was like 4%, when officially we've been seeing an 8% inflation year over year, and unofficially, using shadow stats, it's like 16%. So they're not even keeping up with inflation with their demands there. And they were one of the big sticking points that people were kind of fighting over was, was it like seven days of paid sick time, which is something that, you know, we just experienced pandemic and all the pandemic policies, you wouldn't think you'd want to incentivize employees to come into work sick, and then potentially get other people sick. And then more people are out anyway. But they're not paid. And so they just keep coming in. Yeah, I don't know all the right answers. I think there's definitely some broken parts of it. There's definitely some parts that are important and will continue to stay important. I mean, it's been a part of this country, making the whole West available to manufacturers on the East Coast over by you and raw materials, and now more manufactured goods here in Colorado and California and everywhere, coming back. So yeah, just trying to learn and figure out what's going on with that humans are going to be important, but even more so than trucks, it seems like a lot of rail operations could be automated. So if they were asking for too much money than you might see push towards increased automation. But it didn't even seem like they were asking for all that much. There's not that many real employees and conductors. So yeah, what are your kind of thoughts now a week or two after the whole standoff situation with Congress?
Pete Mento 27:23
Yeah, I've got a a shocking to most people take on, on unions. I was a member of a union. So we can start with that. And having been oceangoing professional, I have a lot of sympathy for these people who are working on trains. And here's the reason why. So we'll start with the sick leave issue. So most people don't realize this. But the people who are working on these trains are away from home for 30 days at a clip. And when you're working home for three days at a clip, and you're sick, and need a couple of days to get your crap together. They're unpaid days off. They're unpaid days off, and they've got to find someone to work and relief of you or the people that are on the train, have to do double shifts, and those double shifts are paid overtime. And by not giving you a day off. It's saying to that person, we're not going to pay you, you want to get paid, because we don't want to have to pay someone else overtime. And it's putting someone whose health is in jeopardy in a position where they say to themselves, either I don't get paid, or I get paid, and I need that money. So whether we like it or not also people that are in that position, that can be a strike against them, when it comes time for promotion, when it comes time to be putting on a better a better line. And most Americans don't realize that that people that are working these long, arduous hours, and they're working an eight hour shifts are taking 16 hours off, they're going back on a shift. You're asking those people now who are in charge of millions of pounds of cargo to do it in a you know degenerative state. Is that really how you want to? It's ridiculous, right? And then to say, we're just asking for some paid sick time. I don't know another person in another industry, where that would be considered a problem. Right? The second half of it is, I don't know a five year period where another industry has probably done so well because of their financial chokehold on the industry. Yeah, as the rail has. And um, I mean, anyone who has watched the show know that we are so pro rail, we could not be more pro rail if we tried. But you've got to take care of the people who make the real work and it's it's a very strenuous a tenuous relationship, of course. And as far as paying these folks goes, there will come a point where paying them is going to hit a tipping point where automation is going to make it easier than paying these people and we forget As consumers just how much of our day to day comfort comes from the rail? We don't have a lot of pipelines. So guess what moves on the rail people, oil, petroleum, kerosene chemicals. And you know, we all worry about these pipelines. But guess what, there's a moving pipeline that goes across all of North America all the time that you have absolutely no idea, livestock alive and dead that's moving, you know, across these pipes. It's, it's just positively incredible. So I am upset that Pro, a pro, and I'm going to get too deep into politics as well upset that it got to the point where we had to use politics to deal with it. And I'm shocked that such a pro labor president would do what he did. I'm happy we avoided a strike. Yes. I'm not happy about what we had to do to get there.
Keenan Brugh 30:50
Agreed. Yeah. Especially for Biden, having done a lot of pro union things in his politics and career up till this point. And it seems kind of unanimous. I think everyone wanted to avoid a strike and all that. But could we not have given them some sick days or figured something out as opposed to legislating and blocking? Because yeah, it seems like they didn't get the best deal in this story probably isn't over yet.
Pete Mento 31:15
You're going to have people leaving the industry? Why? Why would you want to work under those conditions, they get paid well, but not as well, as you would imagine. And it's not easy work. And I defy anyone who thinks it's easy to be away from home for a month at a time to go ahead and try it. I have so much respect for my classmates that still go to see, I have no idea how you do it. Like,
Keenan Brugh 31:37
people don't always think of it. You are right. It does impact all of our industries and all of our daily lives. So it's important.
Pete Mento 31:45
We pandemic without it. That's true. All global economy with All right, so my last topic has to do with air freight, so a terrible harbinger of economic. You know, backsliding, of us seeing things happening faster than we imagined going negative is a simple fact that the air freight industry is facing headwinds a lot faster than any of us imagined that they would. So you're beginning to see availability of capacity and to be able to see downward pressure on rates. And you're seeing that a lot faster than anyone imagined that they would be even on the Asia to the US market, Europe to the US market us to Europe twice for I mean, everywhere. And you're seeing available capacity during the war time, which also not something you would imagine that you would see. This is not supposed to be happening particularly not now around Christmas time, when you would imagine in last minute people trying to get things to market getting back and forth. And then international packages are going back and forth for people in the mail. That's not good. People had hoped, at least a rumor New Year that this would at least have strong demand. And we started to see a follow up back then, even when air freight is beginning to show this level of softening, that is a terrible harbinger for the coming economic stability globally. So I think it could be a lot worse in 2023 than any of us realized.
Keenan Brugh 33:08
Agreed. Well, some people at some companies might be grateful for the now available capacity, especially after the last couple years when capacity wasn't there, similar to the ocean, and prices went up. It's good to see prices down. But to your last point there, what is that saying about the rest of the economy and spending and everything going on? I think some people have already felt like we've been in a recession, but we're probably looking at something much worse in the next year or two years. And yeah, it's a bad sign.
Pete Mento 33:40
Yeah, yeah. So I think it's gonna do a force. But if you want to take us out, because I was thinking
Keenan Brugh 33:47
Absolutely. On that it's a it's tough, being economically minded, where it's a dismal science. But you know, it's important for us to, to understand and do our best with these things. Because figuring out and problem solving, this is how things get a little less dismal. And so on that bright, cheery note here today. Thank everyone. I want to thank everyone here for listening to global trade this week. You can find more of the information in the show notes. If you're not already, please like, subscribe, and smash that notification bell everyone always says on YouTube. But in addition to YouTube, we're also on podcast. So if you have not already, check us out on iTunes or your favorite Android app. Check us out. Thanks so much for tuning in. And we'll see you guys next week with Doug back and we'll be getting into some predictions for the next year. Thanks everybody. See you next.
Unknown Speaker 34:42
Time