Political Quotes

“the 1984 Shipping Act significantly brought openness and competition into the field of ocean shipping, a field dominated for decades by cartels, by fixed prices, by underhanded competition, and by, very frequently, the victimization of those who ship their goods by sea. This 1998 set of amendments to the Shipping Act further opens up the process to competition and allows the business of ocean shipping to operate far more like most of the rest of the free market in the United States, with one exception. If you are a large shipper of goods by sea, sophisticated, a major customer, you deal directly with the ocean carrier, and those relationships with the ocean carrier are made much more flexible, much more subject to competition, by this bill. If, on the other hand, you are a modest shipper, a small or medium-sized shipper, perhaps someone new to the business of exporting your goods from the United States of America, you don't, as a general practice, deal directly with the ocean carrier, you deal with a middleman, a consolidator, a freight forwarder. That small businessman in the various ports of the United States gathers together shipments to the same place from a number of different shippers and makes the arrangements with the ocean carrier. As this bill was debated and reported from the Committee on Commerce, it treated both of these groups in an identical fashion. Each got the benefits of the bill; each got the benefits of competition.”