US DOT and USDA urge end to poor service for U.S. commodities

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U.S. Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg and Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack urged the world’s ocean carriers to mitigate disruptions to agricultural shippers of U.S. exports, and to relieve supply chain disruptions by restoring reciprocal treatments of imports and exports.

In a letter sent Dec. 17, the secretaries said ocean carriers have made fewer containers available for U.S. agricultural commodities, changed return dates repeatedly and charged unfair fees. The two charged that ocean carriers have short-circuited the usual import/export pathways and rushed containers back empty. This poor service and refusal to serve customers, they said, can be seen in the carriers suspending service to the Port of Oakland.

To address this, the secretaries urged carriers to use available terminal capacity on the West Coast in the Port of Oakland, the Port of Portland and other West Coast ports that have excess capacity and would alleviate supply chain congestion. Because the ocean carriers have suspended service at the Port of Oakland, agricultural exporters have been forced to truck their harvests to the Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach. Restoration of service at the Port of Oakland, the secretaries said, would not only ease congestion in the Los Angeles and Long Beach ports, but allow American goods to be promptly exported overseas, and ease the stress on long-haul truckers in California.

The letter was sent to Ed Aldridge, President, CMA CGM America LLC; Tenny Hsieh, President, Wan Hai Lines America; Feng Bo, President, COSCO North America; Kee Hoon Park, CEO, SM Line; Benjamin Tsai, President, Evergreen Shipping Agency; Uffe Ostergaard, President, Hapag-Lloyd AG North America; Jeremy Nixon, President, Ocean Network Express; George Goldman, President, Zim American Integrated Shipping Services; Paul Devine, President, OOCL (USA) Inc.; Doug Morgante, Vice President, Maersk Inc.; Fabio Santucci, President and CEO, MSC Mediterranean Shipping Company USA; and Cheng-Mount Cheng, Chairman and CEO, Yang Ming Marine Transport Company. The letter said that governments and industry must work together to repair the flow of goods worldwide, while ensuring the supply chain is more resilient in the future.

“In the spirit of fully utilizing our current infrastructure, we’re writing to emphasize the critical nature of service to underutilized West Coast ports to ensure American agricultural exports can be freely transported overseas,” the secretaries wrote. “While ships must dwell for several days in San Pedro Bay to berth at Southern California ports, other West Coast ports are less congested and berths are more readily available. Restoration of service would not only ease the congestion at the Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach in Southern California but would allow the prompt export of American goods overseas and ease the strain on the supply of long-haul truckers necessary to transport goods from Northern California to Los Angeles and Long Beach.”

The secretaries said if the reduced and poor service is not addressed quickly, the situation may require further examination and action by the Federal Maritime Commission.