President Biden will deliver remarks today on his administration’s efforts to address bottlenecks in the global transportation supply. Follow here for the latest news.
White House press secretary Jen Psaki addressed supply chain issues and rising inflation Wednesday, saying that the administration cannot “guarantee” when the issues will be resolved claiming that the administration is using “every tool” at their disposal to ease the impact on consumers. The press secretary pointed to the Biden administration’s announcement earlier Wednesday and its efforts to address bottlenecks at two ports in California. Psaki would also not guarantee that Americans will receive holiday packages on time. “We are not the Postal Service or UPS or FedEx. We cannot guarantee. What we can do is use every lever at the federal government’s disposal to reduce delays, to ensure that we are addressing bottlenecks in the system including ports and the need for them to be open longer hours so that goods can arrive and we can continue to press not only workers and unions but also companies to take as many steps as the can to reduce these delays, » she told reporters. When asked by CNN’s Phil Mattingly what the federal government can do to aid the supply chain bottleneck, Psaki acknowledged there “are some realities about an economy turning back on and moving from a period where there was low demand.” “Where there was not the production of goods, even of a range of supplies that the American people are looking for- that as it’s turning back on and as demand has increase as it did. That there would be ups and downs and that’s what we’re experiencing right now,” Psaki added. Asked if Americans should expect inflation to get worse before it gets better, Psaki said she “wouldn’t make a prediction” as there are various issues impacting the supply chain. President Biden will deliver remarks soon about his administration’s plans to address global transportation bottlenecks. The President met earlier today with senior officials and stakeholders to discuss how to collectively tackle the issues. Port operators, truckers’ associations, labor unions and executives from Walmart, FedEx, UPS and Target attended the talks. The White House will work with companies and ports on a « 90-day sprint » to alleviate bottlenecks, according to a senior administration official. Some will start working 24/7 to address the backlogs. The Port of Los Angeles will move to 24/7 service, bringing it into line with operations at the Port of Long Beach, which is already working on a 24/7 schedule, the official said. Those two ports handle 40% of container traffic in the US. Ahead of his remarks, Biden said in a tweet that his administration is « working around the clock to move goods faster. » The Biden administration’s efforts to alleviate the supply chain crisis are a « step in the right direction, » according to Moody’s Analytics chief economist Mark Zandi. President Biden is meeting today with port operators, truckers’ associations, labor unions and executives from Walmart, FedEx, UPS, Target and Samsung as part of his administration’s « 90-day sprint » to address bottlenecks. The spread of the Covid-19 Delta variant caused major supply chain issues, Zandi said. « It really creamed the rest of the world, particularly Asia and more specifically, southeast Asia, and that’s where a lot of these supply chains begin, » he said. He gave an example of Malaysian semiconductor plants shutting down due to workers being sick, which in turn resulted in shortages of vehicle manufacturing compounded by trucker shortages. Zandi also said as more people have been stuck at home, they are buying « all kinds of stuff. » « You got all this stuff coming through the pipe, and the pipe is being disrupted by the pandemic, and that results in this jumbled mess. And then it’s an intricate set of relationships, you know, from the factory to the truck to the port to the container ship to the port to the truck to the warehouse, » he said. Zandi also predicted the cost of goods will stabilize, but it may take until next year. « Each new wave of the virus will be less disruptive than the previous one. We’ll work through these things and we’ll start to see some price moderation; same in the job market, » he said.
