Biden's newest crisis supply chain is broken

San Francisco CA

Description

President Joe Biden wants to break a logjam at U.S. ports and stave off a holiday season of shortages and delays -- bottlenecks that officials and stakeholders say extend far beyond the reach of the White House. Flotillas of cargo ships anchored off major ports and stacks of shipping containers piling up on wharfs have ratcheted up concern that American shoppers may be greeted by empty shelves when the holiday season kicks off next month. That’s led the Biden administration to accelerate efforts, and highlight previous ones, to smooth the flow of goods through the economy. His options are scant and amount to serving as a deal broker. On Wednesday, Biden announced that the Port of Los Angeles would begin operating 24 hours a day and 7 days a week, and that retailers had pledged to step up efforts to move goods. Yet precedent suggests that extending port hours won’t solve the problem alone, as delays are also tied to backlogged demand from the pandemic, a diminished workforce and snags at each step of a shipping route, not just ports. Biden himself made Wednesday as much a call to arms as a celebration of a fix. “This is a big first step and it’s feeding at the movement of materials and goods through our supply chain. But now we need the rest of the private sector chain to step up as well,” Biden said at the White House Wednesday. “And if the private sector doesn’t step up, we’re going to call them out.” The Port of Los Angeles announcement came after discussions with the administration and labor unions, a step the White House called overdue. Six companies, including FedEx Corp and United Parcel Service Inc., also committed to expanding their delivery schedules. Seattle and Portland are suffering the same problem of cargo ships unable to unload there containers in the ports. The prospect of bare store shelves during the holiday season is a political nightmare for the president, who’s already fending off accusations from Republicans that his policies have contributed to a surge in inflation. But the supply chain troubles are in part a consequence of the robust U.S. recovery from the pandemic. U.S. imports, measured by shipping container volume, are running at a record level so far in 2021, according to data collected by Panjiva, the supply chain research unit of S&P Global Market Intelligence.