Ships are lined up off our ports, shipping contains are stacked up to the sky, and store shelves are growing empty. Ultimately the supply chain crisis in this country is because there aren’t enough truckers to move goods from the ports to the stores. Joe Biden. in his infinite wisdom, has decided the best way to fix this issue is to fine the shipping companies for not delivering their goods. It’s so stupid, it just might work.
The Hill reports on this latest attempt at liberal problem-solving:
Officials for the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach said on Monday that they will begin fining shipping companies whose cargo containers stay in marine terminals for too long as they work to reduce congestion in their ports.
Beginning on Nov. 1, the ports will charge containers that fall into two categories: containers scheduled to move by truck and containers moving by rail.
Ocean carriers will be charged for every container scheduled to move by truck that has been dwelling in the port for longer than nine days.
For containers meant to be moved by rail, carriers will be charged after they have been in the port for three days. Ocean carriers will be charged $100 per container, with the fines increasing in $100 increments per day per container.
Hey, that says “officials for the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach” what does this have to do with Joe Biden? I’m glad you asked:
This policy was created with the Biden-Harris Supply Chain Disruptions Task Force, the Department of Transportation and numerous supply chain stakeholders.
Brilliant, Just brilliant.
Again, the reason why this shipping containers are sitting around is because there aren’t enough truckers to move them out. Biden could fine the ocean carriers a million dollars a day and it ain’t going to change that fact.
I don’t actually know that the ocean carriers and the trucking and rail shippers are owned by the same companies, which makes this even dumber. This is kind of like fining Amazon for slow deliveries because the U.S. Postal Service is inefficient.
Doesn’t Biden think that if the shipping companies could deliver these containers, they would? What possible motive or incentive could these companies have for not getting stuff to the stores as fast as possible?
The only thing this new policy will do is add more cost to consumer goods. Inflation has already sent prices spiking and this will make it worse. Democrats think the term “fight fire with fire” means that anything can be defeated with more of the same. They believe racism can be beat by more racism, that poverty can be overcome by making people poorer, and this is Joe Biden thinking he can stop inflation by inflating prices.
Ronald Reagan once summarized the democrats’ approach to the economy as, “If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it.”
Joe Biden has amended that by saying, “If it stops moving, fine it.”
Actually, I think Biden is really saying, “If it ain’t totally f*cked, f*ck it until it is.”
