I'm curious as to what you were told that would make you say that " imports are for all intents and purposes, shut off".
There are surely long waits, but I've not heard anything to the effect of any shut down.
P.S. My vote is Grendel! Suffix, 6.5
I'm leaning towards Grendel too!
It isn't that the tap has been shut off, but that freight has gotten insanely expensive, combined with extreme wait times and MASSIVE backlog that, in PM's case, it isn't worth it to even try at the moment (at the moment... they will try someday).
As I said, imports are still happening, but the freight situation has jacked them up so bad.
Containers normally cost $2-3k to cross the Pacific, with 30-60 days lead. From what I've read, it's now getting passed $7000.00 (and even closer to $14,000 in some cases) - and that's only if someone has the space within the next year - YEAR - or so. I did read some importer saying that he simply cannot find anyone, at ANY price, to ship his containers.
I can't really believe what I read, so I don't, but PM telling me flat-out that they would not sell me a grinder because they simply can't get them... they WOULD sell me something with a 6 month lead time, but that is not what they said. They said (they are very friendly and I like them a lot) - they said simply "No."
Walmart is probably still getting things through (assuredly) but I believe that, for now at least, small to medium sized importers are effectively priced and volumed out of the business.
My information may be outdated - even as I write this, there may be 120,000,000 TEU happily bobbing in Los Angeles and New Jersey - but at the end of the day, importing has become so unreliable from my end that I've stopped looking for anything coming over an ocean.
