It’s Wednesday.
There are 18 days until Halloween!
For Wednesday, October, 13th, 2021, President Biden has received his daily brief. This morning he has signed into law H.R. 2278 an Act “To designate the September 11th National Memorial Trail Route, and for other purposes”. This afternoon he will meet with senior officials and stakeholders to discuss collective efforts to address global transportation supply chain bottlenecks. After his meeting he will offer remarks regarding those efforts.
President Biden has tweeted 3 times so far; I’ll be sharing his first and third tweets down thread.
Second Wednesday Tweet:
The White House published the following fact-sheet on the; Biden Administration Efforts to Address Bottlenecks at Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, Moving Goods from Ship to Shelf
Snips:
Today, the Administration is convening business leaders, port leaders, and union leaders to discuss the challenges at ports across the country and actions each partner can take to address the delays and congestion across the transportation supply chain. And the President will meet with the leadership from the Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach and the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) to discuss the actions they are each taking to address these challenges in Southern California.
These leaders are announcing a series of public and private commitments to move more goods faster, and strengthen the resiliency of our supply chains, by moving towards 24/7 operations at the Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach. These two ports are the point of entry for 40 percent of containers to the U.S., and are on track to reach new highs in container traffic this year. Through August, Los Angeles has moved 30% more and Long Beach over 20% more containers to help U.S. exporters reach customers around the world and U.S families and factories get the goods they need.
White House.gov. 10/13/2021.
The bullet points:
The Port of Los Angeles is expanding to 24/7 operation. The Port of Long Beach expanded operations in mid-September. The Port of Los Angeles is now joining them by adding new off-peak night time shifts and weekend hours. This expansion means the Port of Los Angeles has nearly doubled the hours that cargo will be able to move out of its docks and on highways.
The International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) has announced its members are willing to work those extra shifts. This will add needed capacity to put towards clearing existing backlogs. This is an important first step, now the private businesses along the supply chain need to move their operations to 24/7.
Large companies are announcing they will use expanded hours to move more cargo off the docks, so ships can come to shore faster. Unlike leading ports around the world, U.S. ports have failed to realize the full possibility offered by operation on nights and weekends. Moving goods during off-peak hours can help move goods out of ports faster. For example, at the Port of LA, goods move 25 percent faster at night than during the day. These commitments will help unlock capacity in the rest of the system—including highways, railroads and warehouses—by reducing congestion during the day.
The commitments being announced today include:
- The nation’s largest retailer, Walmart, is committing to increase its use of night-time hours significantly and projects they could increase throughput by as much as 50% over the next several weeks.
- UPS is committing to an increased use of 24/7 operations and enhanced data sharing with the ports, which could allow it to move up to 20 percent more containers from the ports.
- FedEx is committing to work to combine an increase in night time hours with changes to trucking and rail use to increase the volume of containers it will move from the ports. Once these changes are in place, they could double the volume of cargo they can move out of the ports at night.
- Samsung is committing to move nearly 60% more containers out of these ports by operating 24/7 through the next 90 days. 72% of U.S. homes have at least one Samsung product, from appliances to consumer electronics.
- The Home Depot is committing to move up to 10% additional containers per week during the newly available off-peak port hours at the Ports of L.A. and Long Beach.
- Target, which is currently moving about 50 percent of its containers at night, has committed to increasing that amount by 10 percent during the next 90 days to help ease congestion at the ports.
Across these six companies over 3,500 additional containers per week will move at night through the end of the year.
The White House also published a background press call with Senior Admin Officials to explain the move to 24/7 operations.
President Biden’s remarks on the global supply chain are scheduled for 2:20 p.m. D.C., time.
When Biden Bits was published on Tuesday, President Biden had tweeted 1 time. He added 4 tweets giving him a Wednesday Tweeting Total of 5 tweets and 0 retweets.
1 out of his 5 tweets was regarding something other than the Build Back Better Agenda.
As I shared yesterday the White House released the following readout of the G20 virtual summit:
President Biden met virtually with G20 Leaders today to discuss Afghanistan. The G20 Leaders were joined by Leaders of G20 guest countries and international financial institutions. The Leaders discussed the critical need to maintain a laser-focus on our enduring counterterrorism efforts, including against threats from ISIS-K, and ensuring safe passage for those foreign nationals and Afghan partners with documentation seeking to depart Afghanistan. The Leaders also reaffirmed their collective commitment to provide humanitarian assistance directly to the Afghan people through independent international organizations, and to promote fundamental human rights for all Afghans, including women, girls, and members of minority groups. The United States remains committed to working closely with the international community and using diplomatic, humanitarian, and economic means to address the situation in Afghanistan and support the Afghan people.
White House.gov. 10/12/2021.
We now return to our regularly scheduled Build Back Better Agenda tweets:
This is not direct remarks to tweet quote, but given that he says similar things regarding his Build Back Better salesman’s tweets; I picked the most recent remarks from October 5th, 2021.
President Biden: They leave here with a shot at something great: a union job with good wages and benefits that allow them to maintain their dignity and their pride. It’s a ticket to the middle class. This is where the economy starts: with you — your skills, your dreams, and your limitless potential. The only thing we’ve been missing is the will from Washington to finally build an economy around you — an economy that gives you and your family a fighting chance to get ahead, gives our country a fighting chance to compete with the rest of the world. We can’t get here thinking small. We have to think big.
WEDNESDAY’S 3RD TWEET:
This isn’t a direct remark to tweet quote either and if wording seems similar, you aren’t crazy, okay–crazier–he used similar wording in a tweet from yesterday.
President Biden: We need to get this done. But it isn’t enough just to invest in our physical infrastructure. We’re going to lead the world like we used to. If we’re going to do that, we have to also invest in our people, like you do right here in training — in this training facility.
President Biden: They understand that workers and families have a better shot and Americans have a better shot.
Back to Tuesday…
On Friday, October, 8th, 2021, President Biden offered remarks on the September Jobs Report. The below YouTube video is 13 minutes long. His full remarks can be found here.
President Biden: Look, so it’s essential that we have to regain the momentum we’ve lost. As my wife says all the time — a professor, she is — any country that out-educates us is going to outcompete us. The work of our time is to prepare ourselves for it to be competitive to win the fast-changing 21st century global economy. That’s why I proposed two critical pieces of legislation being debated here in Washington right now. One focuses on the investments we need to make in the physical infrastructure of America — roads, bridges, ports, et cetera. The second focus: on the investments we need to make in the American people to make us more competitive. I know this is my legislation, and I feel strongly about it, but the people who have the most at stake are the American people. So, we need to stay focused on what these bills will mean to the people who are just looking for a little bit of breathing room, a fair chance to build a decent, middle-class life to succeed and thrive instead of just hanging on by their fingernails. We need to keep an eye — an eye on what’s fundamentally at stake for our country: the ability to compete and win the race of the 21st century, as we did the 20th century — a race that other countries are doing everything they can to win.
President Biden: Let me close with this: The world is watching. Not a joke. The autocrats of the world believe the world is moving so rapidly that democracies can’t generate consensus quickly enough to bring their people together to get things done. They think democracies — not — not a joke — in my meetings with Putin, in my meetings with Xi Jinping and other leaders, they truly believe that we can’t compete in the 21st century because things are moving so fast — democracies take so much time that they are so divided that they can’t get together in time to act. They believe — they believe they’ll win — they’ll win the day and they can dictate their way forward and leave us behind. They’re betting — not a joke — they’re betting, for the first time, we won’t respond to this inflection point in history, that we’ll fail to rise to the occasion. But you’ve heard me say it a lot of times: It’s never, ever been a good bet to ge- — to bet against the American people. Never.
WEDNESDAY’S FIRST TWEET:
The daily press briefing is scheduled for 1:00 p.m. D.C., time.
This is an Open Thread.
