Transport, Trade and Regulation News

Australia’s government is considering a block exemption to the competition law for liner shipping in a move that has been cautiously welcomed by Shipping Australia, the industry’s national association.

Daniel B. Maffei, a former congressman from New York, has been nominated by President Obama to succeed Richard Lidinsky Jr. as one of the five members of the U.S. Federal Maritime Commission.

The government of India, frustrated by its failure to pass a previous port reform plan following stiff resistance from trade unions and rival political groups, is considering new legislation to make major public ports independent companies in an effort to accelerate economic growth as New Delhi grapples with slowing foreign trade.

The Hong Kong Competition Commission will not take any action against industry sectors that have applied for a block exemption from the law that takes effect on Dec. 14 until the applications have been reviewed, according to the city’s liner shipping lobby.

Transportation stakeholders received something to celebrate this year as 44 percent of the new $500 million round of the Department of Transportation’s Transportation Investment Generating Economic Recovery program went to projects dedicated to moving freight.

The top U.S. rail regulatory agency on Wednesday gave guidance on when it expect to wrap up the issue of reciprocal switching, and provided a glimpse into the arduous regulatory process facing the potential merger of the Norfolk Southern and Canadian Pacific railways, according to attendees at an industry event.

Several long-anticipated rules and proposals for trucking may hit the Federal Register in the next two weeks, including the electronic logging mandate, a final rule on driver coercion and proposals on carrier safety ratings and truck speed limiters.

From global container weight rules to the roll-out of the long-delayed U.S. Customs and Border Protection’s Automated Commercial Environment, shippers and their transportation providers should prepare for these five changes.

China’s crackdown on ocean carrier surcharges, seen by government officials as hurting exporters, is forcing container lines to lower certain charges at a time when their own profits are declining because of overcapacity and rate competition.

A year after acrimonious labor negotiations snarled traffic at U.S. West Coast ports, lawmakers have unveiled draft legislation that could trigger federal intervention to head off future slowdowns.

The U.S. trucking industry won one battle, but lost another in Congress this week. Lawmakers in the House of Representatives passed legislation that clears the way for teenage truck drivers after killing an effort to increase current limits on truck weight.

U.S. lawmakers took a serious step closer to a multi-year highway funding bill Thursday after the House of Representatives passed a six-year, $325 billion bill.

Trucking companies hauling more than 12 tonnes (13.2 tons) in Russia will have to pay new federal highway tolls starting Nov. 15 that could increase transport costs up to 15 percent.

Customs brokers and forwarders are urging the federal government not to botch the late February roll-out of the ACE “single window” program, noting how Australia’s implementation of a similar system roiled supply chains in 2005.

Container lines, U.S. shippers and logistics providers are coming together to figure out the best way to prepare for the July 1 start of new global regulations requiring the weighing of containers before they are allowed to be loaded onto a ship.

U.S. infrastructure projects focused on improving freight movement got more backing from the federal government in the latest round of a popular grant program.

Too few shippers are ready to meet new global regulations requiring the weighing of containers before they are allowed to be loaded onto a ship, said Chris Welsh, secretary general of the Global Shippers’ Forum, the largest global shipper group. Welsh spoke with JOC.com Executive Editor Mark Szakonyi in late September about the risks of not complying with the rules set to take effect July 1, ways to meet the International Maritime Organization regulations and the complicated issue of who exactly is a “shipper.”

U.S. House legislators advocating the scanning all containers that come into the U.S. used a Tuesday congressional hearing on the threat of dirty bombs, or explosives using radioactive materials and conventional explosives, to reiterate their calls for the long-delayed federal mandate.

The U.S. House of Representatives Tuesday approved a three-year deadline extension for U.S. railroads to install new safety technology, avoiding a catastrophe that railroads have said would cripple the network fluidity intermodal shippers depend on.

China’s economic slowdown threatens container terminal operators and container-backed securities, according to two new financial advisory reports.

The U.S. Federal Maritime Commission has voted to seek comments on possible changes to rules covering contracts that govern most ocean container shipments to and from the United States.

The U.S. Federal Maritime Commission voted 4-1 to change licensing and financial responsibility requirements for ocean transportation intermediaries, despite objections from one commission member.

Frank Peake, former president and chief operating officer of Sea Star Line, has lost his appeal of his conviction and five-year prison sentence for participating in a price-fixing conspiracy in the U.S. mainland-Puerto Rico market.

Customs and Border Protection directors Friday urged West Coast brokers and forwarders that haven’t done so to begin filing trade documentation through the evolving “single window” initiative that CBP and several participating government agencies have established, even though mandatory electronic filing is still more than four months away.

The Mombasa County government is trying to extract more fees from users of the Port of Mombasa at two points in the supply chain, which would further drive up shipping costs in East Africa’s largest container gateway.

A second explosion rocked the city of Tianjin, home to the world’s 10th-busiest container port, nearly two months to the day after an explosion in the port area killed nearly 200 people and impacted port operations.

An arm of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development said stronger action is needed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from ships, and that a carbon tax on shipping would be a way to achieve it.

Shippers that operate truck fleets are urging U.S. lawmakers to give states more flexibility to determine whether to allow heavier trucks on their roads.

An increase in the annual subsidy for operation of U.S.-flag ships under the Maritime Security Program survived in a U.S. House-passed bill to end the United States’ 40-year-old ban on oil exports, but the bill’s chances of becoming law remain iffy.

Nearly a year after labor stoppages at U.S. West Coast ports burned scores of perishables shippers, the industry’s largest advocacy group refuses to relent in its push for greater transparency in how ports are operated and negotiations with unions are conducted.

U.S. lawmakers may have avoided a government shutdown last week, but the temporary funding bill that bought Congress 10 more weeks has left important port construction projects and ports’ access to federal grants in peril, according to the top U.S. port lobby.

The National Labor Relations Board determined that International Longshore and Warehouse Union Locals 8 and 40 in Portland violated federal laws prohibiting secondary boycotts by engaging in work stoppages and slowdowns, and on Wednesday ordered the ILWU to cease and desist from those activities.

After collecting thousands of days' worth of data from more than 220 truck drivers, the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration is starting the final analysis stage of its study of the safety impact of its new 34-hour restart rules, which were suspended in December. The agency hopes to complete its study this year.

The great swell in U.S. transportation, warehousing and utility jobs receded in July after hitting historic heights in April and May, but demand for workers remains strong in a complex employment market. Hiring numbers, and separations, continue to rise.

There is no “medium-term” prospect of the European Union expanding sulfur emission regulations for container lines to the Mediterranean, a Port of Barcelona executive said last week.

U.S.-flag requirements raised shipping costs of taxpayer-funded international food aid by 23 percent between 2011 and 2014, according to a government report that provides fresh ammunition to critics of U.S. cargo preference laws.

The Indian federal government is retreating from a controversial “corporatization” plan to transform ‘major’, or public, port trusts into independent companies following stiff opposition from labor unions and some political groups, dealing a big blow to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s reform efforts to stimulate trade and economic growth.

India’s director general of shipping Deepak Shetty said that while the country is working to streamline its bureaucracy to facilitate maritime trade, the total removal of cabotage protections was out of the question.

A new rule protecting U.S. truck drivers from dispatchers and others who encourage them to violate federal regulations to meet unrealistic delivery deadlines may be on the books as soon as next month, according to the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration. But an FMCSA official and at least two shipping executives say it’s a resolution to what may never have been a significant problem in the industry to begin with.

As a concession to the owners of the established port terminals and to encourage them to invest more in their container terminals, Brazil’s Special Ports Ministry has been negotiating to extend the concession periods before the contracts require.