The Washington Post - USA (2021-10-26)

TUESDAY, OCTOBER 26 , 2021. THE WASHINGTON POST EZ RE A25

BY DANIEL YERGIN AND PETER TIRSCHWELL

O

n Oct. 13, President Biden assumed the unofficial title of supply-chain manager in chief. He proposed a “90-day sprint” to try to untangle the gigantic snags in global trade that, as of Thursday, had forced 79 container ships to anchor off the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, Calif., a n all time record. With no berths available, they were unable to unload cargo with a combined value of almost $8 billion, according to industry sources and our organization’s proprietary data. Biden’s fixes are limited. The Great Sup- ply Chain Disruption has been more than a year in the making (last October the first three container ships idled off the Los Angeles-Long Beach port complex), and the supply chain mess will almost certainly continue deep into 2022. The president’s alarm is justified. Supply chain woes are snarling the U.S. economy and stoking inflation. Factories are tempo- rarily shutting down, manufacturers delay- ing deliveries, agricultural exporters losing overseas markets, retailers struggling with empty shelves and consumers worrying whether orders will arrive by Christmas. The Biden administration brokered a deal to have the Los Angeles-Long Beach port complex — the nation’s largest — operate around the clock, rather than its usual 16-hour days, and obtained agree- ments from some major importers to pick up containers in the middle of the night. That’s a m ove in the right direction, but it’s a s mall step: The initial agreement with shippers covers less than 5 percent of the containers moving through the complex. The causes of this maelstrom are deeper- seated than any 90-day cure can address. During the pandemic, locked-down consumers, unable to go to stores, switched to e-commerce. Four to six years of anticipat- ed e-commerce growth has been com- pressed into one year. All those personal computers, toys, power tools and Pelotons are typically shipped via container, mainly from Asia. Shipments into the United States surged. Instead of being delivered to stores, the imported goods went to distribution centers, for direct delivery to homes. Except that there was nowhere near enough distribution center capacity, and a nationwide labor shortage has reduced the pool of warehouse workers and truck drivers. The result? Containers taking much longer to unload and move off the port facili- ties, and newly arrived ships waiting a week or much longer to unload. Importers often have no choice but to leave containers either piling up at the port or in the parking lot of a warehouse with no workers available to unload them and nowhere to put them. That compounds the disruption: Too many containers — the building blocks of global trade — are out of circulation. The supply-chain workforce has itself been disrupted by the pandemic, owing to covid-19 itself or withdrawal from the labor market. Covid-related shutdowns of ports in China and Vietnam have further strained supply chains. All of this has drained capacity and flexibility from a global system based on more than 20 million containers. Freight rates have shot up: A container formerly could be shipped from Asia to North Amer- ica for $1,500, but rates have reached as high as $30,000 in recent weeks. The expense is inevitably passed on to retailers and then to consumers. The White House chided U.S. ports, saying they “have failed to realize the full possibility offered by operation on nights and weekends.” Ports in China — the origin of almost 42 percent of all containers coming to the United States — do operate 24/7. Productivity is a challenge. It takes three times as long to unload a container in U.S. West Coast ports as it does in China, according to IHS Markit port data. But it isn’t so easy for U.S. ports to operate around-the-clock because the entire system of ports, trucks and warehouses needs to move in lockstep to keep the containers moving. Distribution centers would need to be open 24/7 to receive trucks, but the centers typically are not. Expanding port hours accomplishes little if the truckers can’t drop off containers at distributions centers that are not open at night. The continuing disruption is generating various legislative proposals, but they can’t address the sources of the imbalance. Last- ing solutions instead must come from two elusive things: “more” and “less.” More as in more workers — not a simple fix, because a shortfall in workers is bedev- iling the entire U.S. economy. Less as in an easing of consumer de- ma nd. That would relieve pressure on the entire system and help return it to balance. The pandemic-fueled spike in buying goods may be past its peak, as people get out of the house and spend more on services. Yet if the easing reflects a slowing economy (and a response to rising inflation), that would be a high price to pay for ending the disruption. Adding to the pres- sures: Manufacturers still need to rebuild depleted inventories, and retailers need to refill empty shelves. The president may want to sprint, but it’s going to end up a marathon.

Daniel Yergin, the author of “The New Map: Energy, Climate, and the Clash of Nations,” is vice chairman of IHS Markit, where Peter Tirschwell is vice president of Maritime and Trade.

Why the

supply chain

crunch will

continue

A

fter more than a decade of defend- ing Obamacare, Democrats should have learned that Republicans will use every tool available to s abotage a Democratic president’s signa- ture achievement. So why are Democrats making it easier for that to happen to President Biden’s agenda? As Democrats decide how to trim their safety-net-and-climate bill, progressives argue for keeping every item on their wish list, funding each for only a few years rather than prioritizing fewer, permanent mea- sures. They assume every program will prove so popular that future Congresses, even Republican-controlled ones, will have no choice but to renew them. After all, look how difficult it was for Republicans to dislodge the Affordable Care Act! But that is precisely the wrong takeaway from the Obamacare fight. It’s true that killing a benefit already in place is politically perilous. But Obamacare came extremely close to being repealed in 2017 all the same. And critically, t he default for that law was to continue. The programs Democrats are considering now would ex- pire on their own. It’s much easier for Congress to kill a program through inaction than action. Additionally, the ACA experience shows why Biden’s slate of programs might be especially vulnerable to either lapsing — or collapsing. Any major government initiative that passes along partisan lines is inherently less resilient because the other party isn’t invested in its success. In fa ct, in the current political climate, the other party is li kely to be actively rooting for (or accelerating) its failure. That doesn’t mean Democrats should waste time chasing un-gettable Republican votes for Biden’s package, as they did during the 2010 Obamacare negotiations. This time around, Republican leadership made abundantly clear that they planned to block Biden’s agenda at all cos ts. And in any case, any Democratic priorities Republicans were willing to support have already been peeled off in the separate bipartisan infra- structure package. It does mean, though, that Democrats should anticipate, and account for, efforts to undermine their agenda. For example: Sprawling pieces of legislation such as this often have drafting erro rs or structural flaws that are noticed only after the bill passes. Historically, Congress had been willing to quietly pass routine “technical corrections” bills to fix these errors. The ACA changed things, though. Passing legislation to fix even minor glitch- es in Obamacare (among other laws passed with party-line votes) has since proved ex- ceedingly difficult. Ambiguities in the law can also make it easier for future adminis- trations to undermine its implementation. That’s why it’s critical for Democrats to get the nitty-gritty design details right upfront. This is their one shot to ensure programs are bulletproof. They mustn ’t jam through a b unch of half-baked proposals (as they are reportedly now considering, including with a not-yet-stress -tested “bil- lionaire tax”) and cross their fingers that defe cts will be fixed later. A structurally unsound program will risk not only expiring, but also never getting off the ground in the first place. Or it may backfire, if there are unanticipated and uncompensated losers from the plan. (There were some in the ACA, despite pledges to the contrary.) Additionally, some of Democrats’ programs, such as a child-care expansion, are expected to require partnerships with states. States could choose to opt out of these programs, though, thanks to a Su- preme Court decision on Obamacare’s Med- icaid expansion. A dozen states have still not adopted the Medicaid expansion, even though the feds offer generous financial incentives to par- ticipate. We should expect the same with Biden-era programs. How can Democrats minimize this risk? One option is building in backup plans, such as allowing a county to apply for child-care funds even if the state’s governor opts out. Another is — and I realize I sound like a broken record — n arrowing their priorities and funding them permanently, instead of financing everything for just a few years. One of the key talking points that Repub- lican governors, state lawmakers and lob- byists have used to ju stify opting out of the Medicaid expansion is that Congress might someday renege on its high federal funding match and leave states holding the bag. This concern is arguably disingenuous; if anyone would slash federal Medicaid expansion funding, it would be members of their own party. But this is a much more realistic worry for Biden’s agenda. The risk of a future funding lapse is not merely hypothetical; it’s what progressives would write the law to actually do. If funding for a complex new initiative such as child care isn’t guaranteed for at least 10 years, more states might balk at making substantial investments upfront. If Democrats want their “transforma- tive” agenda to not only pass but endure, they will need to evangelize it aggressively — something they learned a little too late with the Obamacare rollout. The GOP’s onslaught of anti-Build Back Better propa- ganda is inevitable. But Democrats also need to give Republi- cans less material to work with.

CATHERINE RAMPELL

Democrats

haven’t put

Obamacare’s

lessons to use

T

he trial over Ahmaud Arbery’s killing promises to be yet another high-stakes test of the proposition that such a t hing as colorblind justice can exist in these United States. Arbery, an unarmed Black man — where have we heard that before? — was chased down, accosted and killed near Brunswick, Ga., by White vigilan- tes in February 2020 for the offense of running for exercise through a White neighborhood. The vi gilantes say they thought he looked like a burglar, hav- ing come to that conclusion even though Arbery, 25, was not carrying anything when they confronted him. We must be shocked and appalled that “jogging while Black” is a capital crime in this country. But at this point, sadly, we can’t be surprised. The only reason we know about the circumstances of Arbery’s killing, and the only reason his three accused kill- ers are on trial for murder, is that one of them recorded the whole thing on his smartphone. The man who made the video, William “Roddie” Bryan, 52, claims he did nothing but use his truck to help chase down Arbery. The other two defendants — Greg M cMichael, 67, and his son Travis M cMichael, 35 — are seen confronting Arbery, attempting to “arrest” him in an encounter that ends with Arbery dead after three gunshots. Incredibly, local prosecutors initial- ly took no action at all against the McMichaels and Bryan — a decision that may or may not have something to do with the fact that Greg McMichael is a former county police officer and a former investigator for the district at- torney’s of fice. Authorities deemed the

White men’s actions justified under a Georgia law permitting citizen’s ar- rests, although the McMichaels saw Arbery do nothing suspicious except jog past their house. While being Black, of course. At this point, I need to remind you that all of this took place in 2020, not

I’m tempted to paraphrase The
Who: Meet the New South, same as the
Old South. But the unacceptable truth
is that this sort of thing — the killing of
unarmed Black people who are just
minding their own business —
h appens in other parts of the country
as well.
The wheels of justice creaked into
motion only after Bryan’s video went
viral, more than two months after the
slaying — and just weeks before the
nation erupted in turmoil over the
killing of another unarmed Black man,
George Floyd. If there had been no
video, there would almost surely be no
accountability whatsoever for Arbery’s
death.
The dif ficulty now, as jury selection
in the trial of Bryan and the
M cMichaels enters its second week, is
that so many potential jurors have
seen the video — and, like me, have
formed strong opinions about the case.
As one told Chatham County Superior
Court Judge Timothy Walmsley, “Some
things you can’t just unsee.”
The video shows Arbery jogging
along a t ree-lined road when he comes
upon the McMichaels’ truck, where
Travis McMichael stood beside the
driver’s side door with a shotgun and
Greg McMichael was in the pickup’s
bed with a handgun. Arbery tries to
run around the truck and is hidden
from view for several seconds. Then he

and Travis McMichael come back into view, engaged in a struggle, and we hear the fatal shots. The citizen’s arrest theory of the defense involves Greg McMichael’s claim that Arbery resembled a man captured earlier by a security camera walking suspiciously through a h ouse under construction. There had appar- ently been some burglaries in the neighborhood, and, well, we all know that a Black man in a White neighborhood is by definition a likely suspect. We also know that Black men, in gener- al, are assumed to have superhuman strength and malign intent. The basic facts of the incident are not in dispute. The verdict on Bryan’s and the McMichaels’ guilt or inno- cence will likely hinge on two ques- tions of law: whether the trio were justified, under a Civil War-era statute (which has already been repealed, in response to Arbery’s killing), to detain a man they believed, rightly or wrong- ly, had committed a crime; and whether Travis McMichael, as he struggled physically with Arbery, was justi fied in killing him in self-defense. The defense will likely argue that race had nothing to do with the tragic encounter. If I were one of the prosecutors, I’d ask the jury to do a thought experi- ment. I’d have them imagine Travis McMichael jogging through one of Brunswick’s majority-Black neighbor- hoods and being physically detained by three Black men, two of whom are brandishing firearms and one of whom ultimately kills him. Would they call that a l egal arrest? Or would they call it murder? This one looks open and shut. Then again, this is America. So, we ’ll see.

EUGENE ROBINSON

C an colorblind justice

be done in this country?

STEPHEN B. MORTON/ASSOCIATED PRESS Greg McMichael, center, with lawyer Laura Hogue during jury selection at his murder trial in Georgia on Monday.

BY LIZ SHULER

T

he picket line has been crowded lately. Tens of thousands of workers are on strike, including nurses in Massachusetts, U nited Auto Workers at John Deere, coal miners in Alabama, metal workers in West Virginia, hospital workers in New York, ironworkers in Pennsylvania and Kellogg’s workers in four states. I recently walked the picket line with Keith Bragg, Darlene Carpenter and other members of the Bakery, Confec- tionery, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers International Union Local 358 in Richmond. They saw Nabisco making record profits while trying to weaken health coverage for new hires. Bragg and Carpenter told me they refused to sell out their younger colleagues through a two-tiered system — and after a five-week strike, they won a contract that preserved good benefits for all. Across industries, workers are stand- ing in solidarity to demand dignity and decency. Some observers see these strikes as one more sign of chaos against the backdrop of an endangered democ- racy, a persistent pandemic and an increasingly unequal economy. But this is not chaos. It’s the opposite. Strikes are leading indicators that our country is heading in the right direction — a healthy response to imbal- ances of power created by employers who believe they should be able to squeeze more and more out of the workers who make their companies profitable. They are profoundly democratic and participatory processes in which workers of different backgrounds and political beliefs unite to take a collective risk in pursuit of a better future: voting to organize, to strike, and to accept or reject contracts.

Workers strike because they’ve hit a breaking point and have no other option. Among those on the picket lines are essential workers who have held up our economy and delivered lifesaving services for the past year and a half. They’re striking now because, despite everything they’ve sacrificed, their employers are still refusing to provide safe workplaces and fair wages.

At the start of my career, I got involved in an organizing campaign to help clerical employees at the electrical utility where I worked; they didn’t have a voice or power like their unionized colleagues in other parts of the c ompany. Through that campaign, I realized that worker solidarity could be the difference between a fair deal and a raw one. Now, as the newly elected president of the AFL-CIO, America’s federation of labor unions, it’s my mission to bring workers’ voices and perspectives into the national debate. Nurses, teachers, manufacturers who produce our staple goods and other essential workers are tired of being thanked in one breath and treated as expendable the next. They’re frustrated at being denied health care, meal and rest breaks, living wages and reasonable hours. They’re done watching CEOs make 299 times more than their workers. John Deere recently raised its CEO’s pay by 160 percent while offering work-

ers a 5 to 6 percent pay increase. That’s how unbalanced our system is today. Recent hand-wringing about a shortage of workers misses the point. The real scarcity story is a dearth of safe, good- paying, sustainable jobs. It’s in the best interest of any business — and our nation’s economy — to settle strikes, give workers a fair deal and get them back to work. The labor union is how Americans have always turned bad jobs into good ones. Collective bargaining and negoti- ating pushes the economy forward so people don’t have to work two or three jobs just to get by. Striking is a right that leads to better policies, better benefits and better lives. And strikes will keep happening until we fix our economy so it works for working people. The best places to start are the Pro- tecting the Right to Organize Act and the Public Service Freedom to Negotiate Act. Both would rewrite our labor laws for the 21st century and rebalance the workplace power dynamic. Two in 3 Americans support unions — the highest marks since 1965 — including 3 in 4 young people. And roughly 60 million people in the United States, or nearly half of all non-unionized workers, would join a union if given the option. But until we update our outdat- ed labor laws, management will continue to intimidate and fire workers who try to organize. To anyone wondering why Americans are on strike, the answer is clear: Work- ers are fed up and fired up. The pandemic laid bare the inequities in our system — and now, exhausted and endangered workers simply refuse to return to lousy jobs. It’s time for employers to recognize our rights and their responsibilities.

The writer is president of the AFL-CIO.

‘Striketober’ isn’t a sign of chaos —

it’s a healthy development for the country

Workers strike because

they’ve hit a breaking point

and have no other option.

The Washington Post - USA (2021-10-26)

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