Lately, we are seeing pictures of empty shelves contrasted with pictures of full container ships floating in the ocean near the huge ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, waiting to be unloaded. What is the problem? Why can’t the ships dock, disgorge their containers, and have the products distributed? First, we wouldn’t have this problem if we had not off-shored our manufacturing to China, Taiwan, South Korea, Vietnam, Japan, Indonesia, Malaysia, etc. We buy about $2 trillion dollars worth of goods from other countries every year, almost $1 trillion a year from China. Most common consumer items—the stuff you buy in Wal-Mart—are now made in China. That means the goods must be shipped over here from over there. Then when it gets here, we must unload the ships and put the containers on trucks and rail cars to distribute them across the country. The problem is not the ports or the longshoremen, who are working as hard as they can. The problem is that there are not enough trucks that comply with California’s insane environmental policies to haul the goods away from the ports. The biggest bottleneck is at the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach which (for the geographically challenged) are in California. On October 16, 2020, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency began enforcing regulations on big rig diesel engines issued by the California Air Resource Board (CARB), fining three trucking companies a total of $417,000. This had the effect of shutting down any truck (big rig, semi, tractor-trailer, whatever you want to call them) that did not comply with California’s very strict emission standards. As a practical matter, this means that most of the big rigs on the road cannot pick up freight at the ports of LA or Long Beach. Older trucks cannot pick up or deliver containers at those ports. This rules out almost half of corporate fleet big rigs, and most of the owner-operators or independents. In theory, independents could buy new trucks that are compliant, but California is also scheduled to begin phasing out deisel-powered big rigs in 2030, in favor of electrically powered rigs. So who would invest in a new truck, which might cost up to $175,000, when it might be outlawed before its economic life ends? Certainly not independent owner-operators, who cannot afford to eat big losses. A few days ago, the White House staged some Kabuki theater in California. Joe Biden met with the heads of the Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach (Gene Seroka and Mario Cordero, respectively), and the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU). They announced that they would be operating the ports 24/7, adding new off-peak nighttime shifts and weekend hours, nearly doubling the hours of operation. But, of course, operating the ports twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week will not help at all. The containers will just pile up on the dock, because the trucks necessary to haul them away have been outlawed.