The National Chicken Council on Wednesday joined 70 other organizations in a letter to President Joe Biden requesting support for agricultural exports due to ongoing ocean carrier activity preventing the affordable and dependable delivery of agricultural goods to international markets.
“According to their own public records, the ocean carriers are enjoying their most profitable period in decades by controlling capacity and charging unprecedented freight rates, imposing draconian fees on our exporters and importers, and frequently refusing to carry U.S. agricultural exports,” the letter said. “These refusals and charges by the ocean carriers dramatically increase costs to our exporters, making foreign sales inefficient and uneconomical, rendering farmers and processors (for the first time), unrelieable suppliers to the global supply chain.”
“The Shipping Act provides the FMC with the authority to prohibit unreasonable, unjust practices, and ‘to promote the growth and development of US exports through competitive and efficient ocean transportation…,'” the letter concluded. “Given the urgency of this situation in commerce, we ask that these tools and any others available to our government be immediately applied to stem the current ocean carrier practices that are so damaging our agriculture exports.”
The letter copied Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg, Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack, Federal Maritime Commission Chair Michael Khouri and Council of Economic Advisors Chair Cecilia Rouse.
The letter can be found here.
