Ocean Shipping Reform Act of 2021

Floor Speech

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Ms. SCHRIER. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding.

I am so proud to represent Washington's Eighth Congressional District, which stretches from the suburbs of Seattle in the west across the Cascade Mountains into the rich farmland of central Washington. It is home to some of the Nation's largest agricultural producers and exporters whose hay, apples, pears, and cherries are in high demand all around the world.

For more than a year, these exporters have shared with me how pandemic conditions and the behavior of foreign-owned shipping carriers are hurting their industries, threatening export markets and relationships that they have developed over decades.

They often don't know when a ship will be in port, making it difficult to get their products to the carrier in time. They are forced to pay additional fees when their products--often perishable ones--have to wait at the port to be loaded on to a ship.

And shipping carriers are opting to return as many empty containers to China as possible for fast turnaround and their own bottom line, rather than accepting U.S. exports. It is better for them financially to return to China with empty containers to bring back TVs, iPads, and just about everything else we buy from Amazon versus bringing back Eighth District hay or agricultural goods. This rejection threatens to upend our Nation's agricultural industry and relationships built over decades for years to come.

I was proud to cosponsor the Ocean Shipping Reform Act of 2021 together with Congressmen Garamendi and Johnson. I thank them for their support. This is a great bipartisan bill that will make a real difference for exporters in my district, and I encourage my colleagues to vote ``yes.''

Mr. JOHNSON of South Dakota.

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