US Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg and Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack urged the world’s leading ocean carriers to help mitigate disruptions to agricultural shippers of U.S. exports and relieve supply chain disruptions by restoring reciprocal treatment of imports and exports and improving service.
Ocean carriers have made fewer containers available for U.S. agricultural commodities, repeatedly changed return dates and charged unfair fees as the ocean carriers short-circuited the usual pathways and rushed containers back to be exported empty.
According to the letter, the poor service and refusal to serve customers is exemplified by many ocean carriers suspending service to the Port of Oakland. For this reason, DOT and USDA are calling on the carriers to more fully utilize available terminal capacity on the West Coast.
The Port of Oakland, Port of Portland, and other West Coast ports have excess capacity to alleviate supply chain congestion.
However, the suspension of service by ocean carriers at the Port of Oakland earlier this year has required agricultural exporters to truck their harvests to the already heavily congested Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach.
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 letter reads.
