The Ocean Shipping Reform Act of 2021

For California AG today, I'm Mike Stephens. A bill in the U.S. House of Representatives has been introduced. The Ocean Shipping Reform Act of twenty twenty one. In order to support competitiveness of U.S. businesses that are reliant on maritime shipping transport. The bipartisan bill aims to crack down on unreasonable practices by container shipping lines. Enforcement against bad actors and improved transparency for exporters. We conclude with Tracey Chow of the Western Growers. She explains how the bill can bolster better work practices.

What this bill for a points to is that some of these issues that are currently happening right now, they're not new. Some of the practices that are becoming a problem have been happening for several years now. It's just that now it's sort of coming to the forefront. And so what the bill attempts to do is to try to frankly have the carriers have to take a little bit more either responsibility or accountability for some of the stuff that they do. It puts more transparency onto how they operate and how they impose certain fines and fees on to exporters and importers and also for the Federal Maritime Commission. It gives them more authorities and more tools in the toolbox to try to help address the situation. Not only can we get this to go after what we set what we would call, the bad actors or the bad practices of the industry sometimes engages in. But to also this simply helps us facilitate better responsiveness from some from carriers.