What we saw in the port of Los Angeles on 19 September – the port through which 40% of goods in the United States enter – with the containers stopped in search of an outlet, helped to make the decision. Against the slowdowns and bottlenecks in the supply chain that are slowing the global economic recovery, the Biden administration in the United States is taking action. And three giants like Walmart, UPS and FedEx are committed to lengthening working hours, seven days a week, to eliminate the imbalances between (expanding) demand and (delayed) supply.
According to reports from the Financial Times, which cites a senior White House official, the three companies will announce this initiative today as US President Joe Biden has scheduled a summit with business leaders, port and transportation executives and union officials to discuss. the strained state of global supply chains and intensify freight traffic.
Biden urges private individuals
“The supply chain is essentially in the hands of the private sector, so we need the private sector to step up to help solve these problems,” a senior Biden administration official told FT. “UPS and FedEx alone shipped 40% of US packages by volume in 2020. By taking these steps they are saying to the rest of the supply chain, ‘You have to move too. Let’s go one step further, ”the official added, citing commitments made by Target, Home Depot and Samsung to move more containers out of ports.
The Biden administration has also pushed rail transport companies, hauler groups and ports to increase their capacity to meet the growing demand. For example, the Port of Long Beach in California took steps to operate on a 24/7 schedule about three weeks ago, and the Port of Los Angeles decided to do the same. The White House’s move to more aggressively push certain sectors to increase hours and capacity comes amid growing concern that economic recovery will be hampered by a long period of supply chain bottlenecks that could also contribute to increased supply chain bottlenecks. inflationary pressures.