Last January, 109 container ships waited off the California coast to unload cargo in Los Angeles and Long Beach. Consumers, stuck at home amid the COVID-19 pandemic, had unleashed an avalanche of orders for goods so large that it had overwhelmed factories and, as a result, the two ports, which are the nation’s largest.
Importers were paying $20,000 to send a single container from China to the United States — sometimes more than the goods inside were worth. Businesses had to backorder everything from bedroom furniture to kitchen fryers — if they could get them at all.
