Keep pressing! There is a serious imbalance with Asian import and export containers, and the United States drafted a bill to prohibit shipping companies from rejecting US exports

U.S. regulatory agencies are increasingly monitoring shipping companies...

Last month, due to the continued shortage of containers, service delays and increased transportation costs, the National Industrial Transportation Union called on Congress to amend the U.S. shipping law to exercise more supervision over containers and spaces.

In recent months, as consumer demand and imports have surged, port operations have reached saturation, congestion and delays have caused inventory shortages for several weeks, and retailers have faced challenges due to continued supply chain disruption. The National Retail Federation of the United States sent a letter to the White House, urging President Biden and other senior government officials to take action on the U.S. supply chain infrastructure crisis.

In addition, the latest news is that the US House of Representatives Transportation and Infrastructure Committee (House T&I) is drafting legislation that will require shipping companies to accept bookings for all US export containers.

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It is reported that the bill was proposed by two senators John Garamendi and Dusty Johnson of the California Democrats. It is a response to the growing complaints of American agricultural shippers. These complaints allege that the unethical business practices of foreign container shipping companies are causing them to lose money and lose market share overseas.

"We have a problem that the shipping industry is discriminating against US exporters," Garamendi said at the hearing of the House T&I Committee on Tuesday to investigate the shortage of export containers.

"This may be because (the shipping company), in order to make more money, shipped the empty containers back to Asia as soon as possible, and did not stay in the United States long enough to load American exports. This is a serious problem."

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Is drafting a law to prohibit shipping companies from rejecting U.S. exports
Garamendi said that the draft proposal will include several provisions to amend the U.S. shipping law, which will be overseen by the Federal Maritime Commission (FMC), including:

Ocean carriers are forbidden to cancel all bookings for export goods.

The ocean carrier is required to include a declaration of compliance with the provisions of the Shipping Law.

The FMC is required to publish on its website all the results of all investigations of false certification of all ocean carriers, as well as possible penalties under current laws.

Establish ongoing responsibilities for FMC to ensure export opportunities for U.S. exporters.

Promote mutually beneficial trade.

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"What is happening to US exporters is unfair and unreasonable. Some shipping companies obviously want to drive up prices." Garamendi said.

According to data from the Agriculture Transportation Coalition (Agriculture Transportation Coalition), U.S. import demand has caused the freight for these goods to soar to US$10,000 or US$12,000 per container. In contrast, container exports only bring shipping companies between US$400 and US$1,800 in freight. U.S. exporters claim that this has caused shipping companies to cancel export orders in order to ship containers back to Asia for reloading more quickly, instead of shipping containers to export loading points in the United States.

And Jen Sorenson, chairman of the American Pork Producers Council, testified that due to the lack of export containers, an average of 22% of agricultural export sales have not been implemented.

However, John Butler, chairman and CEO of the World Shipping Council, which represents shipping companies, refutes claims that its members are driving up prices or being unfair to exporters.

"The real cause of these problems is the substantial increase in U.S. imports." Butler testified at the hearing. "Some people basically think that Asian exporters are pushing products to the U.S. But in terms of shipping, most of the imported goods are It is the American company that is contracted by the U.S. importer to bring these goods to the U.S. for American consumers."

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Butler pointed out that in the normal market, the trade imbalance between the US and Asia's container market is 2 to 1 between US imports and exports, but it has now jumped to 3 to 1. "If you want the entire system to continue to operate, you must return the empty container to these starting points, otherwise the entire system will stop operating."

Undoubtedly, Butler is skeptical about changing the law to give FMC the power to make decisions about the carrier's booking.

"When you start talking about enforcing one or another specific regulations, the real problem arises-you will soon regulate interest rates and prices, because these are not independent of economic operations," he said.

FMC Chairman Daniel Maffei confirmed to the committee that the shipping law currently does not contain provisions for compulsory reciprocal trade, but he is willing to cooperate with Garamendi and Johnson on their proposals. He said "it would be great to have more tools at FMC."

However, he added: "I think we should discuss specific regulations to ensure that there are no unintended consequences. I also want to say that we cannot just use shipping companies as scapegoats. All these baskets have good eggs and bad eggs. "