US Shipping Ports Are Backed Up Again. Where is Mayor Pete?

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It seems as if this has been happening far too often during the Biden administration for some reason. Shipping and the distribution of goods around the country are being impacted because of a shutdown at multiple East Coast and Gulf Coast ports. We saw the same thing happening during the supply chain crunch of 2022 and 2023 on the west coast. But this shutdown isn’t being caused by a lack of goods flowing into the country. Dock workers at ports from Maine to Texas have gone on strike, leading to more lines of ships sitting at anchor, unable to discharge their freight. It’s the first time this has happened in nearly fifty years. So why isn’t this threat to national commerce being addressed? This is a question that needs to be taken to the Department of Transportation. (Reuters)

U.S. President Joe Biden said on Thursday he believed progress was being made in a port labor contract dispute, as dockworkers entered their third day of a strike along the East Coast and Gulf Coast.

The strike, the biggest of its kind in nearly half a century, has blocked unloading of container ships from Maine to Texas, threatening shortages of everything from bananas to auto parts, and triggering a backlog of ships anchored up outside major ports.

No negotiations were scheduled between the International Longshoremen’s Association and employers, but the port owners, under pressure from the White House to hike their pay offer to land a deal, signaled on Wednesday they were open to new talks.

“I think we’re making progress,” Biden told reporters on Thursday, without providing details. “We’ll find out soon.”

This strike has shut down operations at 36 ports including ones in New York, Baltimore, and Texas. This mess has only added to the chaos and disruptions caused by outages spawned by the recent flooding that has paralyzed business operations up and down the coasts. This isn’t some minor quibble over policy differences. This strike is paralyzing vital operations that impact the entire country. Numerous groups have asked Joe Biden to intervene using federal powers to bring an end to the walkout. Biden’s only response thus far has been to say that he “thinks” progress is being made and that we will “find out soon.”

This isn’t something that the President needs to “wait and see” to find out what will happen. He has the authority to shut the strike down in the name of national security. So why isn’t he doing that? Because he’s already afraid of being called a “scab” by his own base and being accused of being a “strike buster.” The Democrats don’t want Kamala Harris to be painted with the same brush if he angers the unions. In other words, this is all about politics.

Even if Joe Biden won’t step in and take decisive action, the proper operation of our ports falls under the Department of Transportation. Why hasn’t Pete Buttigieg been called in to resolve this? It’s not as if the DoT has that many other issues on its plate to deal with at the moment. Sadly, Pothole Pete spends more of his time on vacation than he does doing his actual job. (He’s been learning at the feet of the Vacationer in Chief, I suppose.) Buttigieg missed most of the supply chain debacle a couple of years ago because he was on a honeymoon trip to Europe. And now another crisis has struck our shipping industry and he is nowhere to be seen.

Buttigieg was a DEI hire from the beginning. You will recall that when the rail catastrophe struck in eastern Ohio it took him a full year to even bother showing up to survey the damage. Now we’re faced with a far worse scenario that is already impacting the infrastructure of the entire country and he is once again missing in action. But if it turns out to be worth a couple of thousand extra votes in Georgia, I guess it will all have been worth it, right?