By
Sean O'Shea
October 3, 2017 at 5:00 am ET
After years of failing to crack down on big foreign ocean carriers that manipulate U.S. laws to fix prices and impose unilateral service terms on American ports and shippers, Congress is finally considering legislation that would protect the domestic maritime industry. But these reforms will only work if Congress empowers federal regulators and U.S. maritime companies to take legal action against foreign shipping cartels engaging in anti-competitive practices that threaten the economy and hurt American workers.
Currently, U.S. ports and shippers are exposed to foreign ocean carrier cartels that band together to protect their financial interests while squashing port profits and stifling competition. Over the past several years, these ocean carriers have largely consolidated into three alliances that represent such a large share of the market that they can threaten to steer substantial amounts of cargo away from U.S. ports that balk at fees the alliance offers.
Under normal circumstances, the whole scheme likely would run afoul of the Sherman Anti-Trust Act, which Congress adopted at the end of the 19th century in response to oil, steel and sugar trusts that attempted this same kind of market manipulation. But in the Shipping Act of 1916, Congress created an exemption from antitrust laws for alliances approved by the Federal Maritime Commission.
When Congress revisited the law in 1984, it added a provision that allows a carrier alliance to go into effect automatically, providing antitrust immunity to its member lines, unless the FMC obtains a court injunction within 45 days. Even then, the only acceptable grounds for issuing an injunction are when a proposed alliance will impair shippers. The court cannot consider the potential harm to ports, dock workers or other waterfront service providers. The law further says that only the FMC, and not the Department of Justice, may file such lawsuits, and private parties are expressly barred from intervening in any case the FMC does bring. This special treatment in the current law gives foreign containership lines a virtual antitrust immunity when dealing with U.S. marine terminals, stevedores, tug and towing companies, and other equipment and service providers.
This has created an environment in which U.S. laws favor the interests of big foreign vessel operators at the expense of American port terminal companies, shippers and workers. Today, exactly zero U.S. ship owners participate in the three ocean carrier alliances recognized by the FMC. This means our laws now do more to shield foreign carriers from being sued for antitrust violations than it does to promote the domestic shipping industry.
It is long past time for Congress to update the Shipping Act to give the FMC the power it needs to bring lawsuits to block foreign carriers from colluding to set unfair prices and service terms. At the same time, lawmakers also must allow U.S. port service providers to demonstrate in court how these anticompetitive practices by the foreign cartels are harming their businesses and workers. Currently, their interests are barred from being considered in antitrust actions against foreign ocean carriers.
Absent reform of this outdated regulatory environment, ports will be unable to make critical infrastructure upgrades that will allow the U.S. maritime industry to continue serving as vital economic engine for the country. Ports currently support 23 million jobs and generate more than $320 billion in tax revenue each year. And if current growth projections hold, they will become even more indispensable. By 2030, America’s trade volume is expected to quadruple, including tremendous growth in the amount of freight bound for export. Within 20 years, 60 percent of the U.S. economy is expected to depend upon port-related activity.
But America’s maritime industry will not be able to continue to attract private investors and lenders to build infrastructure to meet this future economic demand unless Congress takes action now to end price-fixing and other anticompetitive practices by foreign ocean carriers that stifle industry profits, put jobs at risk and stifle private investment in much-needed port infrastructure upgrades. In particular, carriers immunized from antitrust regulation are also ordering enormous, new 22,000-container ships that will require new cranes and shore facilities, but they will not provide long-term volume guarantees necessary for ports to finance these capital improvements through regular commercial markets. Aside from this obvious legislative restoration of reasonable balance to enable private industry to meet demands, the two equally unacceptable outcomes are to do without the infrastructure and pay the economic penalty when bottlenecks occur, or look to taxpayer-funded solutions.
Many lawmakers in Congress have talked about the need for modernizing regulations that constrain U.S. economic and job growth. They now have the perfect opportunity to reform U.S. maritime laws so they protect America’s shipping industry and port workers instead of lining the wallets of foreign competitors. And these reforms must begin with giving the FMC and the American maritime industry the power to take legal action to block unfair, anticompetitive actions by foreign cartels.
Sean P. O’Shea, who was an aide to former Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.), is an attorney who works on transportation and infrastructure issues, in addition to being a board member of Building America’s Future.
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