General

On Tuesday, maritime regulators from China, the United States and the European Union held the fifth biennial Global Shipping Regulatory Summit to discuss competition issues related to liner shipping. The FMC stated that it participated in a web summit hosted by the European Commission (EC) to discuss "bottlenecks in the shipping-related supply chain and the reasons for service interruptions", how other regulatory agencies can address this issue, and "may take action to improve the Resilience and smooth operation of the industry."

The FMC stated that in addition to four of the five FMC members attending the meeting, Henrik Morch, Director of Transport of the European Commission’s Directorate-General for Competition, and Li Tianbi, Director of the China Water Transport Bureau, also attended the meeting.

The meeting discussed three broad agenda items. First, the industry dynamics since the outbreak of the new crown epidemic, including the determination and identification of supply and demand analysis, supply chain bottlenecks related to shipping, and reasons for service interruptions. The second is the response actions taken by the relevant jurisdictions and authorities so far and their effectiveness. Finally, the future direction and possible actions to improve the resilience and smooth operation of the industry.

“The performance of ocean carriers in meeting the historical needs of their services and the unusually high cost of transporting ocean containers are the interest and concern of global regulators, legislators, and the public,” said Daniel Maffei, chairman of the Federal Maritime Commission, based in Washington, DC Commented. "The Global Regulatory Summit provides an opportunity for the major competition authorities responsible for overseeing the container shipping industry to share their respective regulatory and enforcement systems and compare their conclusions on the conduct of carriers."

At the time of the summit, due to the numerous complaints from American shippers about insufficient capacity and excessive fees, FMC is increasingly scrutinizing shipping companies. US President Biden asked FMC to strengthen law enforcement as part of its review of supply chain disruptions that occurred during the epidemic. One of the tasks is to review how shipping companies issue demurrage and port demurrage bills. The U.S. Congress also hopes to strengthen the national shipping law to make it more difficult for carriers to refuse to export containers. This issue has affected U.S. agricultural carriers.

Due to record profits and poor shipping schedule reliability, liner companies are facing large-scale scrutiny from regulators in many countries this year. The next Global Shipping Regulatory Summit will be held in Beijing in 2023.