NITL, Retailers Ask Congress for Legislation Repealing Ocean Liners’ Antitrust Immunity
This story appears in the Jan. 31 print edition of Transport Topics.
More than two dozen retail and shipper organizations, including the National Industrial Transportation League and the National Retail Federation, have urged congressional leaders to advance legislation that repeals the antitrust immunity that ocean liner carriers have enjoyed since 1916.
“That rare and special privilege allows foreign shipping companies to collectively fix the freight rates, service terms, and vessel capacity offered to U.S. importers and exporters,” the groups said in a letter to House Transportation Committee Chairman John Mica (R-Fla.) and several other leaders.
“In today’s global marketplace, there is no rationale for allowing these anticompetitive practices to continue,” the groups said in their letter.
Problems from the recession were “exacerbated by ocean carriers who ‘rolled freight’ and stranded cargoes in foreign and U.S. ports, breached their contracts with U.S. importers and exporters, and applied virtually uniform across-the-board rate increases and surcharges,” according to the letter.
Spokesmen for both the Transpacific Stabilization Agreement, an organization that represents major container shipping lines, and the World Shipping Council, declined comment on the letter.
Curtis Whalen, executive director of the American Trucking Associations’ Intermodal Motor Carriers Conference, said ATA for several years has supported removing ocean carriers’ antitrust immunity but recently hasn’t been actively engaged in debating the issue.
“They should not be free to discuss prices and various other things that truckers can’t do,” Whalen told Transport Topics.
“I certainly think it’s an issue that needs to be looked at and addressed again,” Whalen said, “but when I rank issues, I would not put it up in the forefront.
The idea of removing ocean carriers’ immunity has been debated in Congress off and on for years. The most recent effort, a bill introduced last year by Rep. James Oberstar (D-Minn.), the previous House Transportation Committee chairman, failed to muster support.
Joanne Casey, president of the Intermodal Association of North America, said her group had not yet taken a position on the issue.
“We know that Federal Maritime Commission is looking at some of these issues,” she told TT. “Absent any specific regulatory or legislative initiatives, we don’t have an official position on it.”
In a statement in December, NITL officials expressed “profound disappointment” over a fact-finding investigation by FMC into numerous U.S. importer and exporter complaints of “perceived malpractices” by ocean carriers that resulted in supply-chain service disruptions and rate and surcharge increases from 2009 though much of 2010.
“The commission appears to have concluded that these problems were simply a misunderstanding between carriers and their customers,” said Bruce Carlton, NITL president.
