Page 20: of Marine News Magazine (November 2021)

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Column

Washington Watch

Feds Struggle to Address

Supply Chain Capacity Issues

By Jeff R. Vogel, Partner, Cozen O’Connor’s Transportation & Trade Group

The Biden

Administration’s struggles to alleviate supply chain capacity issues appear to be con- ments (although some commitments were extremely vague) tinuing with no end in sight. Part of the issue arises from from Walmart, UPS, FedEx, Samsung, Home Depot and the Administration’s limited focus on ports and another Target, to increase their use of off-peak hours to move addi- part arises from Congressional stalemates. Could the tional containers from Port of Los Angeles’ marine terminals.

much-needed beltway leadership on these issues come in However, anyone involved in the U.S. maritime industry the form of the newly-tapped Maritime Administrator? knows that a myopic focus on expanded port operations will have minimal impact on the present supply chain ca-

Biden focuses on ports to address larger issues pacity issues. The entire U.S. logistics network – including

Throughout October the President and his Supply marine terminals, equipment providers, trucking compa-

Chain Disruptions Task Force – including Port Envoy (and nies, rail operations and terminals, and warehousing – is former Deputy Secretary of Transportation) John Porcari – operating at or above full capacity. Driver shortages contin- met with representatives from the Ports of Los Angeles and ue to impact trucking, which unless immediately resolved,

Long Beach and the International Longshore and Ware- puts a cap on the amount of cargo that can be moved out of house Union (ILWU) to discuss the supply chain capacity overloaded marine terminals. Accordingly, absent a sudden issues throughout Southern California. The result of these (and highly unlikely) reduction in U.S. consumer demand, meetings, as laid in an October 13 White House Fact Sheet, a whole-of-network approach is the only way that there will was that the Port of Los Angeles agreed to expand to 24/7 be any easing of the U.S. supply chain capacity issues.

operations, which would be supported by the marine ter- minal operators and the ILWU members at the port. Despite capacity challenges, infrastructure bill stalls

As a follow up to these discussions, President Biden met One of the major challenges in adopting a whole-of-net- with shipper interests in an effort to obtain their commitment work approach has been the absence of a single Federal au- to use these expanded port hours. The White House Fact thority with oversight over all aspects of the U.S. intermodal

Sheet indicated that President Biden had obtained commit- transportation network. Transportation stakeholders were hopeful that the infrastructure bill would solve this issue through the creation of a new Of? ce of Multimodal Freight

Infrastructure and Policy (OMFIP) within the U.S. Depart- ment of Transportation (USDOT). If the infrastructure bill is ever enacted, the OMFIP would provide a cohesive inter- modal planning authority that has been sorely missing with- in USDOT. The OMFIP would be headed by a new As- sistant Secretary for Multimodal Freight who, among other responsibilities, would be charged with (1) overseeing certain multimodal freight grant programs within USDOT; (2) fa- cilitating the sharing of information between the private and © dbvirago / Adobe Stock 20 | MN November 2021