Rushmore State News

During an episode of the Breaking Battlegrounds podcast, U.S. Rep. Dusty Johnson, R-S.D., delved into supply chain challenges facing the United States.

Johnson appeared on the podcast, hosted by Sam Stone and Chuck Warren, focusing on politics and key national issues. Johnson serves on key House committees, including the Select Committee on China. Along with current supply chain issues, he brought up the 2022 Ocean Shipping Reform Act.

“There are a lot of factors that make that supply chain pretty fragile,” Johnson said during the podcast. “And we're 80,000 truck drivers short. We only have five major ocean carriers. And so if one or two of them decide that they're not interested in fairly hauling American products to market, we've got a problem. We had done somewhat of an underinvestment in infrastructure over the previous 20 years. I think that's beginning to move back in the right direction.”

In a news release on PR Newswire, Coupa Software, a vendor of business spend management systems, said that during the pandemic, the country’s supply chain faced multiple challenges, which now include rising inflation and interest rates that are having an ongoing impact on the economy. The company added that the issues are likely to continue throughout the year and could exacerbate supply shortages, driving costs up and making shipping unstable.

“During the height of the 18 months after the worst of the pandemic, we've moved past the worst of the health issues, but we were still dealing with some economic fragility," Johnson said on the podcast. "Sixty percent of containers that were going back to Asia were going back empty.”

Johnson added that these containers were returning empty while American food products were decaying on the docks.

“They didn't want to haul American goods,” Johnson said during the podcast. “They wanted to get back, grab Chinese iPhones and bring them back quickly. And I totally get it. I mean, in a true free market system, okay, listen, you get to decide how you want to make your money. [If] you can make more money doing that, I guess, good on you. But these guys are using American ports. And I just think at some point you need some basic reciprocity.”

Johnson said that the issue drove legislators to pass the Ocean Shipping Reform Act in 2022. The law was passed to cut shipping expenses and reduce supply chain delays by enabling the Federal Maritime Commission to intervene against unwarranted fees and unwarranted rejection of American goods by shippers, according to a U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation news release.

The news release said the law would also allow the commission to target other practices that could harm the economy.