The National Association of Chemical Distributors (NACD) wants you to call your senator and ask him or her to support the Ocean Shipping Reform Act (OSRA) to address the shipping crisis. The bill passed the House in December and has yet to be voted on in the Senate.
The OSRA will not help the shipping crisis. If it has any effect at all on port congestion and delays, it might make them worse. But overall, it’s non-responsive to the problems our ports face.
The NACD supports the legislation because it would help chemical distributors when they take disputes before the Federal Maritime Commission (FMC). The FMC rules on disputes between ocean carriers and shippers. The OSRA places the burden of proof on ocean carriers in those disputes, thereby making it easier for shippers, such as American chemical distributors, to win.
The bill also requires ocean carriers to take American exports when able, and it adds the promotion of “reciprocal trade” to the FMC’s mission. These are all concerns that American exporting industries raised well before the shipping crisis began, and none of them directly relate to the problems we face today, which have much more to do with organized labor, warehouse space, truck-chassis access, environmental regulations, and high levels of consumer demand for goods, among other things.
The NACD is far from the only trade group for American exporters that supports the bill. The National Retail Federation and the Farm Bureau, among many others, issued statements praising the OSRA when it passed the House in December. But that’s mostly because American exporting industries saw an opportunity to use public attention on shipping to get changes they have wanted for years. The bill is classic Washington corporate-interest politics, not a response to the supply-chain crisis.
The NACD’s job is to advocate for American chemical distributors, and the OSRA would help American chemical distributors, so it makes perfect sense that they would support the legislation. But it won’t solve the supply-chain crisis, or really do much to help things at all. You can read my full piece from December on the OSRA, which includes comments from a former member of the Federal Maritime Commission, here.