President Biden hosted business and labor leaders of the Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach at the White House Oct. 13, and issued orders for the operations to run 24/7 to relieve long-standing congestion. He commended mega-firms for committing to speed up shipping, including Walmart, Target, Home Depot, UPS and others. He thanked the International Longshore and Warehouse Union, and unions and workers. His action follows on the Administration’s creation in June of a “Supply Disruptions Task Force,” but these actions all proceed outside the reality of acknowledging the decrepitude of the entire economic platform of the nation, especially transportation infrastructure. So, the “fix” of asking the ports, dockworkers and truck drivers, as well as merchant cartels, to just “do more,” is a sick joke.
Some of the actual dimensions of the U.S. freight crisis were reviewed by national logistics experts on Oct. 13, at a meeting of the international Propeller Club convention, that was held virtually, of top leaders in world ports and shipping. Panelists included officials from the Port of Mobile, Port of Georgia, the Rotterdam Shortsea Terminals, and many others. What is manifest right now, is that the entire U.S. freight system is seizing up, from the combined impact for years, of the lack of pipeline capacity, rail capacity, driver shortages, along through to the backlogs in port infrastructure.
