Transport, Trade and Regulation News

A new U.S. Department of Transportation push to promote coastal and inland waterway container services has come despite signs that such efforts have a poor track record.

Import cargo volume at the largest U.S. container gateways has begun its seasonal rise, but is expected to be largely flat compared with last year’s record high numbers, the National Retail Federation and Hackett Associates said in their monthly Port Tracker report.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection says that while it is safeguarding against a redux of the “fumbled” initial rollout of its new electronic filing system, it cannot “100-percent guarantee” users won’t face the same glitches and network errors when the remainder of system filers are onboarded later this summer.

The Federal Maritime Commission is trying to facilitate industry discussion of the new container-weight rules set to take effect July 1, FMC Commissioner William Doyle said.

Agriculture shippers are asking Congress to determine whether the U.S. government can revise or downright revoke a new international container weight rule, ahead of a congressional hearing on the controversial regulation next week.

Sweeping new food safety rules are moving from the regulatory menu to the plates of U.S. shippers, logistics operators and carriers engaged in food transportation.

Federal investment is expected to fall nearly $130 billion short of the investment in land- and waterside infrastructure ports will make over the next five years, according to a survey of members of the top port lobby in the nation.

The value of California’s exports declined in most categories in February according to the Beacon Economics monthly report, although Beacon’s projection for the rest of the year is “tepidly optimistic.”

The U.S. Congress will look into the impact the global SOLAS container weight rule will have on exporters next week, the latest sign of how some shippers’ frustration with the rule is mounting ahead of the July 1 deadline.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection says the glitches that riddled the initial rollout of its new electronic filing system over the past week are resolved and it’s safeguarding for when the remainder of system filers are onboarded this summer.

Ship brokers have joined the chorus of concern over the impact of a regulation requiring shippers to verify the weight of a container before it is loaded on board a ship that comes into effect on July 1.

If recent trends are an indication, U.S. importers have little reason to be concerned the verified gross mass declarations of containers will be checked by the U.S. Coast guard when the SOLAS container weight rule takes effect July 1.

Russia’s leading stevedoring companies have voiced their disdain for proposed initiatives of the Russian Federal Customs Service and some state officials to curb the powers of customs offices to service import-export cargo in the Big Port of St. Petersburg, Russia’s largest container port.

The Thursday rollout of U.S. Customs and Border Protection’s ACE “single window” for filing experienced few problems until Friday, when the long-delayed initiative frustrated brokers and shippers with network errors and system-wide crashes.

Criticism and confusion from U.S. shippers, particularly U.S. exporters, greeted the Friday announcement by the 13 terminals at the Los Angeles-Long Beach port complex that they will not offer weighing services to support implementation of a global container weight rule.

Meeting the new International Maritime Organization requirements under the Safety of Life at Sea amendment that all containers be weighed before loading for shipment could increase the cost of ocean freight transport by more than 10 percent, according to a new report.

The first of many deadlines in the rollout of U.S. Customs and Border Protection’s ACE “single window” initiative came and went Thursday without any major hiccups.

Shippers that use forwarders to move full-container-load boxes will not escape responsibility to comply with global container weight rules even if they are not officially the “shipper” under the carrier’s bill of lading.

A proposed class-action complaint filed with the U.S. Federal Maritime Commission seeks unspecified damages for car buyers who allegedly paid higher costs for motor vehicles because of price-fixing by roll-on, roll off carriers.

News that the International Atomic Energy Agency had verified Iran’s compliance with requirements to curtail its nuclear program raised the hopes of project shippers eager to help restore Iranian infrastructure and energy production. But most companies will have to wait a while — and the wait may be longest for U.S. companies, which are likely to be stuck in line behind their European Union counterparts.

There are now less than 100 days before a new international container weight rule goes into effect and the rollout is taking shape in very different ways in each of the 162 participating nations, with some governments giving clear guidelines while others haven’t provided any direction at all to date.

Ocean carriers are telling exporters that even though they are required to provide a single, certified weight for containers that includes the weight of the container itself, exporters are not legally responsible for verifying the weight of the container.

Dutch ports, led by Rotterdam, are to appeal an EU ruling that they must pay corporation tax from next year.

The European Shippers’ Council has urged the EU to "abolish" completely rather than modify ocean carriers’ pricing system of general rate increases.

Compliance with the new container weight verification rule that will be imposed on July 1 is beginning to crystallize around two key points for shippers: What is the carrier cut-off time for submission of the Verified Gross Mass, and will boxes without the VGM be stopped at the gate?

Washington state legislators are once again pushing to reform the U.S. Harbor Maintenance Fee in an effort to secure more funding for the ports of Seattle and Tacoma, two gateways facing stiff competition from Western Canadian ports for U.S.-bound cargo.

Shippers seeking to avoid supply chain disruption on July 1 when a new container weight rule takes effect need to be mindful of one key fact irrespective of what they may or may not be hearing from government enforcement agencies: No matter what country a ship is departing from, container carriers cannot load a container for which it has not received a verified gross mass declaration from the shipper.

In a followup to a previous trade advisory, customs authorities at Jawaharlal Nehru Port Trust have set up a separate wing to handle processes related to “direct port delivery” for the clearance of import freight from India’s biggest public container gateway as part of larger program to facilitate trade and ease congestion in the harbor.

U.S.-Mexico cross-border trade experts say it will be nearly impossible for U.S. presidential hopeful Donald Trump to pursue many of the cornerstones of his trade platform: including his now-infamous wall and severe tariffs on Mexico imports.

The U.S. Coast Guard shrugged off suggestions that the rollout of a controversial new container weight regulation is mired in confusion and concern at a congressional hearing Tuesday.

Japan’s government has set an acceptable discrepancy between the verified gross mass and actual weight of a container at the upper end of its proposed range as the July 1 implementation of the International Maritime Organization's Safety of Life at Sea, or SOLAS, container weight rule looms.

A group of 49 shippers associations and supply chain stakeholders is calling on the U.S. Coast Guard to leave unchanged the existing processes for finding and transmitting cargo weight information.

JOC’s annual TPM Conference is one of the premier events for the shipping and transportation industry. Bringing so many different players together across industry segments brings out a variety of perspectives and ideas whose exchange reveals valuable and unexpected insight while sometimes casting issues into a completely new, and unexpected, light.

Inttra, the ocean shipping e-marketplace, this week unveiled a demo of a new online platform aimed at allowing shippers to submit the verified gross mass — as required by the SOLAS container weight mandate that takes effect July 1 — just as seamlessly as they submit shipping instructions.

Following lengthy consultation with various stakeholders, India has drawn up its first draft of guidelines for the July 1 implementation of new container weight rules set by the International Maritime Organization’s Safety of Life at Sea, or SOLAS, convention.

China’s exports tumbled 25.4 percent year-over-year in February and imports fell 13.8 percent as the country's trade slowdown accelerated, catching some analysts by surprise.

The U.S. Coast Guard has said it is communicating with the largest global container line group in an effort to hash out the details behind a controversial new container weight rule set to take effect in just 116 days.

U.S. ports are supposed to steadily gain more federal funding each year, but a strong U.S. dollar could stymie Congress’ framework for providing more money for dredging and jetty maintenance.

A group of U.S. agricultural exporters has endorsed a Coast Guard’s admiral’s view that compliance with international container-weighing rules should be handled as a “business practice” instead of through regulatory enforcement.

The largest global container line group is asking the head of the U.S. Coast Guard to clarify its position on the SOLAS container weight mandate after a rear admiral said the rule was a commercial, not a regulatory, matter, an interpretation the World Shipping Council says flies in the face of the rule set to take effect in just 120 days.