Up First from NPR - Baltimore Automaker Solutions, EU Farmer Protests, Cocoa Prices Go Up

Episode Date: March 30, 2024

Some car companies are looking for workarounds to get their vehicles from ships to dealers after the Baltimore bridge collapse. Demonstrations turn violent in Europe as farmers protest European Union environmental policies and cheap Ukrainian imports. Chocolate lovers will have to pay more for treats as cocoa prices skyrocket.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

The fatal bridge collapse in Baltimore is complicating business for the auto industry. The port normally handles more cars than any other in the U.S. So how are vehicles being transported to dealers? I'm Aisha Roscoe. And I'm Scott Simon, and this is Up First from NPR News. European farmers are mad and protests on the continent have turned violent. They want the EU to ease up on environmental laws and clamp down on cheap Ukrainian imports. So what's being done to end the crisis?

And better save up for the chocolate Easter bunnies and mini eggs this year. Cocoa prices are on the rise and it's been expensive to satisfy that sweet tooth. So please stay with us. We have the news you need to start your weekend. Now, our change will honor 100 years of the Royal Canadian Air Force and their dedicated service to communities at home and abroad. From the skies to our change, this $2 commemorative circulation coin marks their storied past and promising future. Find the limited edition Royal Canadian Air Force $2 coin today. The Port of Baltimore handles more cars and light trucks than any other port in the U.S.,

but after the devastating bridge collapse, most of it is now blocked. So how are automakers planning to get their vehicles from ships to dealers? And Piers Camila Dominovsky joins us. Camila, thanks so much for being with us. Thanks for having me. What kind of delays have you learned about? Mostly I've learned that it is still too soon to say what kind of delays we're looking at. A lot depends on how long the port stays mostly blocked.

That's going to determine what the workarounds are for companies and so what the impacts are. Companies like Mazda and Mercedes, they say they're still looking at their options. But we know this is harder for them than rerouting a container. Baltimore is not a particularly big port when it comes to processing containers. But like you mentioned, it's very significant for vehicle imports and exports, handled nearly 850,000 of them last year. And it's not just volume. It takes special ships to move these vehicles. They're called roll-on, roll-off, or

row-row vessels. And not every port is capable of handling them. And then once the vehicles come off the ship, there is really important processing that has to happen. This includes adding parts, installing accessories on the vehicles. There's inspections. There's paperwork that has to happen before a vehicle gets the window sticker. And that happens at the port. And if you can't do that, even if you've gotten them off the ship, you wouldn't be able to sell the car. What are the potential options? What are the alternatives? Yeah, from my conversations, there's three that really stand out. One is there is a part of the Baltimore port that is still open. Right at the mouth of the harbor, there's a terminal that Volkswagen and BMW use for their vehicles, and that terminal has confirmed

that they have a capacity to accept other vehicles too. Second, companies could unload their vehicles at another port altogether and then drive them to Baltimore for the second part of the process, the processing. I talked to the Port of New York in New Jersey. In Newark, they said they have been in conversations about this, that they could take vehicles off a ship and put them right on a car carrier bound for Baltimore. And Scott, one advantage of both of those approaches for Baltimore is it would still support jobs at the port even while ships can't get through. But you mentioned three options. Yeah, the other is companies could use ports that are much farther away where they are

already processing their vehicles. So for instance, there is the port of Brunswick in Georgia. It's a long way from Baltimore, but the port says they have had conversations about being a backup option. And there are other ports up and down the East Coast that are also good candidates. They're places that companies are already doing this vehicle processing for other parts of the U.S. market. It would mean a longer drive to dealerships, but a lot of ships go up and down the East Coast and stop at multiple ports, so it might not require a detour at sea. And it would mean the carmaker could unload and process the vehicle at the same port in the same place they already use, basically their normal process until the drive.

However, does this mean that Baltimore could lose out on this important business in the long term? People have really emphasized to me this would be an interim solution. Baltimore's location right in the middle of the East Coast, the expertise and the equipment that Baltimore has for these kinds of vehicles in particular, that will still be there in the future. I spoke to one supply chain expert who was very confident that this was not going to hurt the port's long-term outlook. And here's Camilla Dominovsky. Thanks so much for being with us. Thank you. European farmers clashed with police in Brussels this week, the latest in a string of protests that have rocked the continent for months.

They say they want changes to European Union agricultural policies. Terry Schultz joins us now from Brussels. Terry, thanks for being with us. Good morning, Scott. What's behind these protests? Basically, farmers say their expenses are too high and the prices they get paid are too low to earn a decent living. So they're determined to pressure officials into changing the laws. This last protest on Tuesday saw hundreds of tractors block the area around European Union headquarters where agricultural ministers were meeting. Road traffic was absolutely impossible and even some metro stations were closed as police tried to keep the chaos contained.

Let's listen to the scene and a warning to listeners, it is the sound of an explosion. So what you're hearing here is a clash between hundreds of protesters and riot police. There were fireworks being thrown, farm equipment was spraying liquid manure everywhere, water cannons were shooting back at the farmers, there was tear gas being sprayed by police, protesters were burning metro stations. And a couple of months ago, they even toppled a historic statue outside the European Parliament.

And law enforcement officers and protesters are regularly injured, so these are pretty big disturbances. What would they like the EU to do, or do less of? Both. Complaints differ based on where the farmers are from, but many center on getting the EU to soften environmental regulations to limit competition from outside the bloc, which includes ending negotiations they demand for free trade deals with countries in Latin and South America. And as you mentioned, this is a really big one. They want to lower the administrative burden on producers to deal with what they feel are just too many rules. And another problem cited by some farmers, particularly in the

east, is an exemption that's been granted for Ukrainian goods to enter the EU market tariff-free, which of course keeps the prices pretty low. And this was to help Ukraine after Russia launched the war, but it's been met with bitter opposition by farmers who say a lot of these goods don't just transit through their territory, but stay in their markets. Are the protests working? Well, you know, these protests are getting a lot of attention and they are getting some concessions. The agricultural lobby is very powerful in Europe, and especially when you've got thousands of farmers and hundreds of tractors blocking everything. Here's Belgian Deputy Prime Minister David Clarenval after that Tuesday meeting when the latest protest occurred. Belgium is currently the rotating EU president, so they chair these meetings.

You'll hear him here through an interpreter. The voice is clearly heard. The European Commission, the Belgian presidency. All member states are committed to meet the legitimate concerns of our farmers. So far, some countries have passed exemptions from certain taxes, especially on fuel. They've suspended some of the stricter rules on pesticide use, and some have provided more direct financial aid to farmers. But these very disruptive demonstrations also seem to be costing farmers empathy among the general public because, as I can tell you firsthand, they inevitably create a very big, very smelly and dangerous mess. However, since they seem to be having some impact on decision makers, I expect them to continue.

Well, good luck at those demonstrations, Terry Schultz and Brussels. Thanks very much for being with us. You're welcome, Scott. Chocolate lovers may have noticed they're paying more for treats lately. That's because the cost of cocoa is surging fast. NPR's Alina Selyuk is here to tell us why. Good morning. Hello, hello. So I was, you know, I buy chocolate bunnies and all this stuff for my kids. They love it. For Easter. But it costs a lot.

Like, what's going on? So what it boils down to is there's been a dramatic drop in supply. The world is facing the biggest deficit of cocoa in decades. Most of cocoa beans are grown in West Africa, about two-thirds of them, and most of it in Ivory Coast and Ghana. And farmers there have been facing extreme weather, changing climate patterns, which have just decimated crop harvests. We're talking heavy rains, floods, then dry season with intense winds, just wrong things at the wrong time. All of this has exacerbated problems with pests and diseases. And not just for one crop season or even two crop seasons, cocoa harvests are expected to fall short for the third year in a row. Oh my goodness, that doesn't sound good. So not enough cocoa means companies that make chocolate are having to figure this out and then pay a lot of money to get their hands on it?

Yes, that's exactly what's going on. And then on top of that, you add market speculators, which is, you know, traders trying to make a quick buck on this whole cocoa insanity. And what you see is cocoa prices just growing and growing. Right before Valentine's Day, they hit an all-time record from 1977. That's a long time ago. Then they just kept going. Last week, one cocoa price hit $10,000 per metric ton. Just in time for Easter, too. To sum it up, cocoa prices more than doubled in just three months and more than tripled in the past year. So is this why I'm seeing, you know, candy companies offering Easter bags with like extra gummy candies and marshmallows instead of chocolate? Like, is this all about cocoa prices? Well, to be clear,

surveys say people like this, that people love jelly and candy coated and gummy. So maybe that's part of it. But yes, big chocolate brands have been adjusting to this new world of extremely expensive cocoa. We've seen companies like Mars just straight up shrinking the size of some of their chocolate bars. We've seen Kit Kat really lean into those non-chocolate flavors, like they've got a lemon crisp or there's a new chocolate frosted donut flavor. But mostly brands like Nestle, Hershey, Cadbury, they've just been, you know, raising prices actually for months. So how much are we talking about? Quite a bit.

Price of chocolate at major U.S. stores has increased nearly 15 percent since the start of last year. That's according to an analytics firm, DataWeave. For comparison, non-chocolate candy inched up just 4% in that time. So 15% versus 4%. So is there any resolution in sight? Or am I going to have to start really saving up for that chocolate splurge? I think you better start saving up. So to fix the shortage of cocoa, a couple of things could happen.

There could be a miraculously healthy harvest all of a sudden, which seems unlikely, or it will take a while. You know, it takes years for newly planted trees to start producing cocoa beans. Companies that make chocolate are saying they're planning to keep raising prices. And the interesting thing is that people have not been cutting back on chocolate despite these higher prices. You know, it's an indulgence. People maybe expect to pay more. There's a whole word for it, right? Chocoholic. People are crazy about chocolate. So that's a big question, whether people will start scaling back or maybe we'll start seeing just like more and more really tiny chocolate bars instead of the big ones, which frankly, maybe we could all use. Well, I mean, for my kids, since they're not paying for it, they don't care.

So that's another way to solve the problem. That's NPR correspondent Alina Selyuk. Thank you so much for joining us. Thank you. And that's up first for Saturday, March 30th, 2024. I'm Aisha Roscoe. And I'm Scott Simon. Danny Hensel produced today's podcast with help from Andrew Craig. Our director is Michael Radcliffe. Our editors are Hadil Alshalshi, Julia Redpath, Claire Lombardo, Nick Spicer, and Don Clyde. Our technical director is Hannah Glovna

with engineering support from Carly Strange, Nisha Hynas, and Phil Edfors. Evie Stone is our senior supervising editor. Sarah Lucy Oliver is our executive producer. Jerry Holmes is our deputy managing editor. Tomorrow on Up First, who is the piano man in China who chooses to play in locations of great sadness? For more news, analysis, interviews about books, films, and music,

you can always tune in to Weekend Edition. And you know where to find it, NPR, of course. Yes, find your station at stations.npr.org.