US regulator probing China’s role in container shortage/strong>
John Gallagher, 06 May 2021
A top maritime official has started an informal investigation into whether China is using its market power to monopolize containers and other equipment crucial to international supply chains to pump up rates paid by American exporters.
Carl Bentzel, a U.S. Federal Maritime Commissioner (FMC), told attendees at a virtual business meeting hosted by the Intermodal Association of North America that he is looking into the availability of containers, intermodal chassis and railroad equipment, and whether the U.S. has become overly dependent on such equipment owned and managed by China.
“I am concerned that this equipment is controlled by a state-owned enterprise and that we’re completely reliant, and I have questions about whether or not there’s been market manipulation of what is potentially a monopoly,” Bentzel said at the meeting on Wednesday. “We really need to take a look at our reliance on that segment of the industry, and evaluate how important it is to our nation.”
Bentzel made public months ago his concerns about shortages of equipment used to support cargo moving in the U.S. trans-Pacific trade in the wake of volume surges at the country’s major container ports, particularly the Los Angeles-Long Beach complex.
“I would note with concern that most intermodal chassis and marine containers are manufactured in China,” Bentzel stated in November. “I find it hard to believe with the full restoration of Chinese manufacturing that has come roaring back, creating volume surges, that the marine equipment segment has lagged so far behind.”
