Supply Chain News: Biden Administration Efforts to Address Global Supply Chain Bottlenecks
October 13, 2021
President Biden knew that there would be massive economic challenges emerging from the pandemic. The Biden Administration acted quickly to get the economy moving again – passing and implementing the American Rescue Plan to get checks in bank accounts and get Americans vaccinated.
But as the country recovers from a once in a century pandemic and economic crisis, the private businesses that make up our supply chains, which get goods to businesses and the American people, have struggled to keep up. The pandemic has led to a surge in e-commerce, with sales increasing 39 percent in the first quarter of 2021 compared to the first quarter of 2020. At the same time, COVID has disrupted workers in key transportation and logistics nodes – the jobs of 1,800 Southern California port workers were disrupted because of COVID earlier this year.
These disruptions are not just happening here at home, but all around the world as COVID has led to global shut downs and disruptions. The Chinese ports of Yantian (Shenzhen) and Ningbo-Zhoushan—two of the top 5 largest ports in the world—each experienced multi-week partial-terminal closures aimed at curbing COVID outbreaks, slowing global supply chains due to increased dwell times and cancelled sailings. In September, hundreds of factories closed under lockdown restrictions in Vietnam, halting production that supports thousands of retailers worldwide. They have been slowly reopening in early October but must still contend with mounting supply chain issues. These disruptions have made the transportation supply chain more unstable and difficult to predict.
The President launched the Supply Chain Disruptions Task Force in June, which included a focus on transportation and logistics bottlenecks to the U.S. economic recovery. After meeting with local government leaders and companies to diagnose the problems and identify solutions, Port Envoy John Porcari was appointed in August to help drive coordination between the many private firms who control the transportation and logistics supply chain.
Today, the Administration is convening business leaders, port leaders, and union leaders to discuss the challenges at ports across the country and actions each partner can take to address the delays and congestion across the transportation supply chain. And the President will meet with the leadership from the Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach and the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) to discuss the actions they are each taking to address these challenges in Southern California.
These leaders are announcing a series of public and private commitments to move more goods faster, and strengthen the resiliency of our supply chains, by moving towards 24/7 operations at the Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach. These two ports are the point of entry for 40 percent of containers to the U.S., and are on track to reach new highs in container traffic this year. Through August, Los Angeles has moved 30% more and Long Beach over 20% more containers to help U.S. exporters reach customers around the world and U.S families and factories get the goods they need.
Resources:
Click here for the White House Fact Sheet: Biden Administration Efforts to Address Bottlenecks at Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, Moving Goods from Ship to Shelf.
Click here for the White House Readout of Virtual Roundtable on Collective Efforts to Address Global Supply Chain Bottlenecks.
Click here for the White House Background Press Call on Global Transportation Supply Chain Bottlenecks.
Click here for President Biden’s Remarks on Efforts to Address Global Transportation Supply Chain Bottleneck. (Note: Remarks start at 53 minutes).