North America about to be hit by tsunami of Far East goods
By Jerome R. Corsi
Yangshan
The Chinese deep-water port at Yangshan, near Shanghai, provides ample evidence North America is about to be hit by a tsunami of containers from China.
Yangshan is a reclaimed island the size of 470 soccer fields that lies in the East China Sea Port, offshore from Shanghai.
According to Bloomberg News, the Chinese have invested $15 billion to develop Yangshan, currently the largest port in China.
Currently handling 20 million containers a year, Yangshan is expected by 2010 to operate up to 30 berths, capable of exporting 30 million containers a year, with the vast majority destined for North America.
The Chinese developed Yangshan to accommodate the largest post-Panamax megaships now being constructed, with a capacity to carry up to 12,500 containers, three or four times the size of container ships now operating.
Yangshan Port is connected to the mainland by the 20-mile long Donghai Bridge.
As a clear indication of globalism's impact on the U.S. economy, international trade has grown from 13 percent of the U.S. Gross Domestic Product in 1990, to 24 percent in 2000, with projections of 30 percent by 2010, according to Andrew Goetz and Sutapa Bandyopadhyay, transportation economists at the University of Denver.
The Emma Maersk
Goetz and Bandyopadhyay observe that until now, most of the foreign trade enters the U.S. through containers delivered to West Coast ports, including Los Angeles and Long Beach, with the containers "transferred to rail cars and trucks for distribution to inland load centers and eventually to wholesale and retail outlets throughout North America."
With the West Coast ports "sagging from the weight" of the massive increase anticipated in containers coming from China, Goetz and Bandyopadhyay suggest the transportation infrastructure of North America is being transformed, with a plan of opening new international trade "gateways," including deep-water ports in Canada and Mexico, as well as developing advanced truck-train transportation infrastructure, including newly configured north-south transportation corridors connecting the U.S. with Mexico and Canada.
WND previously reported plans to deepen and widen the Panama Canal so post-Panamax container ships can access U.S. ports such as New Orleans, Houston and Corpus Christi.
In 2005, the largest container ships carried an average of less than 2,500 containers. Today, megaships containing 9,500 containers are in operation. The Emma Maersk, one of the largest container ships, is over four football fields long (1,300 feet) and capable of handling 12,500 containers, stacked in 22 rows across its deck.
A YouTube.com video showing the Emma Maersk at sea gives an idea of the megaship's magnitude.
According to the foreign trade statistics maintained by the U.S. Census Bureau, the U.S. imbalance of trade with China is in the billions and growing every year, from a deficit of approximately $162 billion in 2004, to $202 billion in 2005, and $233 billion in 2006.
China now holds $1.3 trillion in foreign exchange reserves, 80 percent of which is held in U.S. dollar assets, the largest amount of foreign exchange currency ever held by any country in the world.
As WND reported, repeated visits of top Bush administration bureaucrats, including Secretary of Treasury Henry Paulson and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, have failed to get China to eliminate unfair trade practices, including subsidizing its currency.
Alan S. Blinder, a Princeton University economist who was former Federal Reserve Board vice chairman, told the Wall Street Journal in an interview reported March 28 that the U.S. was at risk of 40 million jobs being shipped out of the country to outsourcing in the next decade or two.
The Wall Street Journal reported 40 million jobs lost were more than double the total of U.S. workers employed in manufacturing today.
Blinder was a top adviser to President Clinton whose "free trade" views led him to strongly recommend the passage of NAFTA, the North American Free Trade Agreement.
WND also reported President Bush, in response to a question at the press conference concluding the third summit of the Security and Prosperity Partnership in Montebello, Quebec, Aug. 21, ridiculed as "conspiracy theory" the idea SPP could develop into a North American Union or promote the development of a NAFTA Superhighway.
Yet, WND has documented plans by Transport Canada, the counterpart of the U.S. Department of Transportation, to build an Asia-Pacific Gateway Corridor linking deep-water ports in British Columbia in a continental transportation infrastructure aimed at taking a share of the rapidly developing Chinese container market for Canada.
WND also reported a Transport Canada announcement that Ontario and Quebec have signed a memorandum of understanding to seek a public-private partnership to finance a segment of the Canadian Continental Gateway and Trade Corridor, according to the dictates of Canada's National Policy Framework for Strategic Gateways and Trade Corridors.
WND reported the official website of the Mexican northeastern state of Nuevo Leon reports its governor, Jose Natividad Gonzales Paras, has actively discussed with numerous U.S. government officials – including Texas Gov. Rick Perry, Secretary of Transportation Mary Peters, and Secretary of State Condelezza Rice – the extension of the Trans-Texas Corridor into Mexico to create what Mexico is calling a "Trans North America Corridor."
WND also has documented plans the Texas Department of Transportation has finalized and disclosed on its website to build the four-football-fields-wide Trans-Texas Corridor.
Original Source