Is it “mission accomplished” for the supply chain bottleneck in Southern California ports? That’s the story that the Biden administration wants to tell.
“I’m here today because ports are essential to our nation’s economy,” Secretary of Labor Marty Walsh said, with his distinct Boston accent, in a press conference at the Port of LA on Nov. 30.
The tale he spun out was one of cooperation between unions and shippers and overall improvement that should help get Christmas back on track.
However, most of that improvement in whittling down the backlog of ships was illusory.
“To avoid large lines of ships piling up, they instituted a triage system. You now need to wait your turn to come ashore, and if you have to wait because there isn’t enough room, you typically hang out at sea,” R Street Institute Director of Competition Policy Ashley Nunes told the Washington Examiner.
“The logjam hit a peak of 86 container ships offshore on Nov. 16, according to data from the Marine Exchange of Southern California. A week later, it was a mere 61, the lowest since early October,” FreightWaves, a trade publication, reported.
That smaller number didn’t make the problem go away.
“The waiting container ships are still out there — more of them than ever. It’s just that more are over the horizon, where you can’t see them, thanks to the successful implementation of a new queuing system,” the trade explained.
As the facts of the significant bottleneck reversal are getting out, the Biden administration has some amount of egg on its face. For people waiting on the goods in those boats at sea, it is unlikely to be a case of out of sight, out of mind, and the potential for mockery is high.
“I don’t know if I would say [the new queuing system] was done to make the administration look better — they are arguing it’s for environmental reasons — but the optics aren’t ideal,” Nunes admitted.
The bottleneck problem may extend much further than the ports themselves.
“Certainly rail is less congested / more fluid than in the recent past,” Association of American Railroads spokesman Ted Greener told the Washington Examiner.
However, “intermodal figures” — transportation involving both rail and trucks — “are actually down, with that being driven most so by international intermodal movements,” he said.
“Our CEOs continue to emphasize that they can move more goods but that they need those goods to get on the rails and can’t do that themselves,” Greener added.
Chris Spear, CEO of American Trucking Associations, has been telling anyone who will listen that his industry is down about 80,000 drivers, with some of that caused by vaccine mandates and threats of mandates.
Marc Scribner, a transportation policy analyst for the Reason Foundation, thinks the current bottleneck is not a problem that has a political solution.
“The thing no one wants to hear is, there is nothing anyone can really do to ‘fix’ this,” Scribner told the Washington Examiner. “Barring a recession, the flow of goods is expected to continue to overwhelm logistics capacity through at least 2022. Goods demand remains at unprecedented levels thanks to consumer substitution from services that were shut down by the pandemic and healthy bank accounts bolstered by government checks.”
Scribner said he believes that “relief will arrive, but not immediately,” and warned, “Politicians should recognize that we are still dealing with a [once-in-]100-year pandemic and not overreact with misguided quick-fix snake oil policies that could do real long-term damage.”
Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg, who faced criticism recently for being a no-show on bottleneck issues on account of his secretive paternal leave for two adopted children, may have missed out on the queuing controversy as well.
Asked if Buttigieg played any role in developing this new wait-at-sea system, R Street’s Nunes replied, “Not that I am aware of.”
