Isn’t a supply chain mess the sort of thing a secretary of Transportation is supposed to keep an eye on? What’s he been doing all this time?
The worsening supply chain issues plaguing the country do not have one single cause.
To get caught up, I urge you to read my colleague Dominic Pino, here, here and here to start. Two key points: “The federal government could spend a quadrillion dollars on ports, and it wouldn’t change the contracts with longshoreman unions that prevent ports from operating 24/7 (as they do in Asia) and send labor costs through the roof… The pandemic merely immanentized a crisis that was long brewing. The problems we are now enduring won’t be solved by a pandemic-emergency stopgap measure. They require real changes to the way the industry works that will be difficult to design and implement and will encounter heavy resistance from interest groups that benefit from the status quo.” (Biden announced today that the Port of Los Angeles will indeed start operating 24/7.)
Pent-up consumer demand is increasing rapidly, and suppliers are struggling to keep up. Chinese ports are closing because of COVID-19, and they’re also dealing with rolling power outages, and they’re dealing with typhoons on top of that. Vietnamese ports and factories are dealing with COVID-19-driven shutdowns and slowdowns as well. (It would also help if cargo ship captains stopped trying to parallel park in the middle of the Suez Canal.)
There’s a lot that the Biden administration cannot control. There is no button in the White House that can make a lot more unionized heavy crane operators appear, or make Chinese ports open, or make shipping containers appear where they’re needed.
But the administration is far from blameless. Shutting down pipeline projects and barring fracking does not help reduce energy costs. The vaccine mandate undoubtedly is creating staffing issues at some companies, even if they are minor ones. The administration emphasizes that all of their policies are supposed to help with job creation, but employers keep declaring they can’t find workers, a shortage that “stumps” the Secretary of Labor.
And perhaps most importantly… a worsening backlog of cargo and freight at American ports is the kind of problem the federal government is supposed to detect early on, isn’t it? Pete Buttigieg didn’t cause the worsening backlog of cargo at our ports, but…isn’t that the sort of thing a Secretary of Transportation is supposed to keep an eye on? What’s he been doing all this time?
The declaration from analysts that that “supply chain issues could ‘last until the early parts of 2023,‘” will leave lots of Americans wondering just how a problem this big, far-reaching and severe could sneak up on an administration like this.
Then again, this administration was blindsided by waves of migrants, inflation, the Taliban conquering Afghanistan, and the Delta variant wave in late summer. Just what does this administration do all day?