Long Beach and Los Angeles no longer sending out mostly empty ships

My column this week begins with this image: The giant ships from Asia steam into the Southern California ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach laden with flat-screen TVs, flip-flops, copying machines, nail clippers, Thomas the Tank Engines and all the other necessities of modern life. They leave port a few days later loaded mainly [...]

New column: The port that exports

I have a column in the issue of Time with a fire alarm on the cover, and online here. It begins: The giant ships from Asia steam into the Southern California ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach laden with flat-screen TVs, flip-flops, copying machines, nail clippers, Thomas the Tank Engines and all the other [...]