Hasn't he missed the boat? Biden rolls out $17billion plan to upgrade aging ports in bid to fix supply-chain chaos as part of infrastructure bill
President Joe Biden has rolled out a $17billion plan to upgrade aging ports in a bid to fix supply-chain chaos as part of the infrastructure bill.
The White House outlined the plans on Tuesday - an urgent need as a backlog of ships waiting to dock at major transit hubs has fueled inflation and wreaked supply-chain havoc across the country - but admitted the chaos would not be sorted in time for the holiday season.
Last week Biden predicted it would be 'two to three months' before the public starts to feel the real effects of the bill because most of the projects at long-term investments rather than short term fixes.
The upgrades include $4 billion of construction on coastal ports, inland waterways and other corps-eligible facilities, as well as $3.4 billion worth of improvements on obsolete inspection facilities to smooth international trade at the northern and southern borders.
The announcement comes as shipping backlogs continue to cripple supply chains, with Christmas toys and holiday goodies among the items stranded in the Pacific as freightliners queue for weeks to unload cargo.

President Joe Biden has rolled out a $17billion plan to upgrade aging ports in a bid to fix supply-chain chaos as part of the infrastructure bill

The plans are an urgent need as a backlog of ships waiting to dock at major transit hubs has fueled inflation and wreaked supply-chain havoc across the US
The $1 trillion infrastructure package was passed by Congress last week but Biden is yet to sign the legislation into law.
Biden is expected at the Port of Baltimore today to lay out the benefits infrastructure bill, emphasizing how the spending can strengthen global supply chains to help lower prices, reduce shortages and add union jobs, according to a White House official.
Biden plans to hold up Baltimore's port as a blueprint on how to reduce shipping bottlenecks that have held back the economic recovery from the coronavirus pandemic.
The city's port is adding container cranes as well as a 50-foot berth where ships can be unloaded and benefiting from grants to upgrade the Howard Street Tunnel, a brick-lined underpass for trains that opened in 1895.
The tunnel would be expanded so that shipping containers could be double-stacked on railcars, making it easier to move goods out of the port.
The infrastructure package includes plans for dredging to allow for larger ships and capacity expansion. Many US ports have bridge or depth limitations that restrict their ability to receive larger vessels, while a surge of cargo is straining land operations at some ports.
And data sharing among shipping lines, terminal operators, railroads, truckers, warehouses, and cargo owners, will be streamlined to smooth supply chains, a White House source told CNBC.

President Joe Biden has tried to avert the crisis during the festive season by touting new commitments from businesses and ports to ease the burden on shoppers

Shipping containers are held up at a terminal at the Port of Long Beach as supply issues hold up the systemOn Monday evening, in an interview on local television in Cincinnati, Ohio, the Democratic leader insisted it would only be a 'matter of weeks' before the effects of the massive investment plan would start to be seen.
Days earlier he had predicted it would be 'two to three months' before the public starts to see the real effects of the bill on expanding internet networks, roads, bridges, drinking water pipes, electric car charging stations and a slew of other projects.
The current supply chain crisis has caused a delay in shipping multiple products to stores and warehouses which has resulted in a months-long shortage of multiple products - and warnings that the crisis will get even worse before it improves.
Americans are facing having to swap prime rib roasts, juicy sirloins and filet mignon for cheaper alternatives this year because of inflating meat prices caused by the supply chain issues.
'Meatflation' has sent the price of meat soaring - a ribeye roast rose by 95 per cent from $8.71 per lb last November to $16.99 per lb this week - because ocean cargo carriers are opting to ferry non-perishable goods like toys and technology over to the US from Asia, instead of taking export jobs of US meat to the rest of the world for fear of not getting the shipments there in time and the food spoiling.
But toys, clothes, home appliances and more may still be in short supply over the holiday season because so many are stuck either in factories in China or in containers on board cargo ships off the coast that are waiting their turn to dock.
At almost every link in the chain, there is a shortage; there aren't enough yard workers to unpack the cargo on the ships quickly enough, nor are there enough drivers able to ferry them around on the ground.
In stores, retailers don't have enough workers to unpack them once they arrive.
Startlingly high prices are appearing in meat aisles across the country in what shoppers have begrudgingly come to know as 'meatflation'. Prices shown reflect an average of retail prices advertised in the week starting November 5. The data was released by the US Department of Agriculture. Every type of beef rose in price, with bone-in ribeye seeing the highest spike of 95% from the same week last year

But toys, clothes, home appliances and more may still be in short supply over the holiday season because so many are stuck either in factories in China or in containers on board cargo ships off the coast that are waiting their turn to dock, leading to increasingly barren shelves
Meanwhile the mass congestion of empty containers is monopolizing space in nearby truck lots, blocking filled containers from getting moved, and crippling efficiency.
In order to fetch a new order at the port, trucks must first return their previously-used container to the steamships – but with space at a premium, cargo operators are refusing to accept the empty containers.
Meanwhile, consumer prices rose 0.4 percent in September, slightly higher than August's gain and pushing annual inflation back to its highest increase in 13 years, the Labor Department said last month.
The consumer price index rose 5.4 per cent in September from a year ago, up slightly from August's gain of 5.3 per cent and matching the levels seen in June and July.

Biden celebrated the passage of the infrastructure bill with Vice President Kamala Harris on November 6

The consumer price index rose 5.4 percent in the latest quarter and is expected to still increase
The Geniuses running the country!
ReplyDelete-
You can't collect full containers unless you return empty containers.
I have empty containers.
Yes but we don't have space for them as we have too many full containers.
-
And they actually pay these fools.