During a visit to the Western Hemisphere’s busiest port in Los Angeles, President Joe Biden made no bones about taking on the nine ocean carriers in the three main global shipping alliances for their role in stoking US inflation that’s running at the hottest pace in 40 years.
“Every once in a while, something you learn makes you viscerally angry. Like, if you had the person in front of you, you’d want to pop them. No, I really mean it,” Biden said of the Asia- and Europe-based firms that share vessel capacity on key trade lanes and currently enjoy immunity from US antitrust laws.
“These companies have raised their prices by as much as 1,000%,” he said Friday, urging the House to pass the bipartisan Ocean Shipping Reform Act that the Senate passed unanimously in March and would allow the Federal Maritime Commission to crack down on shipping fees charged by international carriers.
