U.S. Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee Chairman John Thune (R-SD), along with Lamar Alexander (R-TN), Sen. Deb Fischer (R-NE), and Sen. Cory Gardner (R-CO) introduced S.1298 to help with early identification of port disruptions before they inflict serious damage on businesses and the broader U.S. economy.
Some estimates have stated that the recent nine month labor dispute at 29 West Coast container ports cost the economy up to $2.5 billion per day and the resulting strife was widely cited as a contributing cause to the anemic 0.2 percent annual growth rate of the U.S. economy in the first quarter of 2015. According to the U.S. Department of Transportation, more than half of all containerized imports enter the U.S. through West Coast ports. The Department has separately stated that a “lack of complete data on U.S. international freight continues to hamper research and analysis of trends in international freight movement and its impact on transportation activity within the United States.” While the Maritime Administration (MARAD) does produce its annual Statistical Snapshot of 20 water-freight-related statistics on freight volume and port of entry, MARAD has reported that the lack of a national standard for performance measures and “the lack of a reporting process have stymied its attempts to measure the efficiency of major U.S. ports.” The recent labor dispute at West Coast ports underscored how a lack of data and transparency to quantify on-going problems at the ports can affect businesses from coast to coast. According to the U.S. Department of Transportation over half of all containerized imports enter the U.S. through West Coast ports.
S. 1298 creates a new level of transparency and accountability for ports, many of which are government owned, by requiring:
- The director of the Bureau of Transportation Statistics (BTS) to establish a port performance statistics program and report annually to Congress on the performance and capacity of the Nation's key ports;
- U.S. port authorities that are subject to federal regulation or that receive federal assistance to report annually to BTS;
- The Secretary of Transportation, in consultation with the Secretaries of Labor and Commerce, to report to Congress on a port's performance before and after the expiration of maritime labor agreements to help indicate whether labor discussions have impacted operations, the estimated economic impact of such disputes, and roughly how long it will take for shipments to return to normal; and
- The addition of needed sunshine to maritime shipping through our ports to help head off future economically destructive impediments to commerce.
For more information on S. 1298, please contact Billy Johnson.