Connect with us

Politics

Business experts split on criticism of Buttigieg on supply chain issues

Published

on

Experts say Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg should work with truck industry to address supply chain issues.

Amid images of goods stranded on ships near America’s ports and notable price increases in basic commodities, including food and gasoline, right-wing critics are lambasting Pete Buttigieg in his role overseeing the supply chain as transportation secretary, although business experts in the field are split over whether that criticism is valid.

Business experts who spoke to the Blade ā€” and whose own views may be colored by their political affiliations ā€” offered a range of explanations for the break down in the supply chain, such as a sharp increase in demand among American consumers, the coronavirus pandemic, and a shortage of truck drivers responsible for transporting goods, which led to different conclusions as to whether Buttigieg, the first openly gay person confirmed by the U.S. Senate for a Cabinet position, was responsible.

Daniel Innis, a professor at the University of New Hampshire Peter T. College College of Business and Economics and who specializes in marketing and logistics and is a board member of Log Cabin Republicans, said criticism of Buttigieg is “certainly warranted” because he isn’t showing leadership in bringing stakeholders to the table.

“Pete can help by sitting down with the trucking industry, the railroads and so on and saying, ‘Look, this is a crisis that we have to solve,'” Innis said. “Eventually, you know, we’re going to get to a place where things that are really important aren’t available to us, and this has to be fixed. So you know, we need some leadership coming from Mayor Pete.”

As a result of supply chain issues, consumers are seeing increased prices for goods, including basic necessities like food and gasoline. With the Thanksgiving holiday fast approaching, experts say prices for turkey could be the most expensive in history for American consumers.

Innis, who said the supply chain depends on flow and “if any part of the chain breaks down, the whole thing collapses,” said the problem he’s hearing is on the receiving end at terminal hubs where truck drivers are supposed to pick up goods.

As an example, Innis offered a personal anecdote about being in Savannah, Ga, and seeing about 20 ships on the coastline waiting to come into the port. Such a port, Innis said, would be a first stop for goods before they’re loaded on trains and headed to terminal hubs, where truck drivers then pick it up.

“That’s where it’s breaking down,” Innis said. “Things are not getting picked up. And maybe a month or so ago, the Union Pacific Railroad basically barred anything coming out of LA for a week, so they could clear out the stuff from the Chicago terminal that wasn’t being picked up. So it seems to me based on my observation that we’ve got a real problem with truck drivers at the final destinations, and they’re not able to pick things up. So it backs up the entire system, and it’s backed up now all the way to the ocean.”

Specific things Buttigieg should be addressing with the trucking industry, Innis said, are why there is an such an acute truck driver shortage and what could be done to address it, including whether or not to change hours of service limiting the number of work hours truckers can drive each day, at least in the short term.

Other ideas Innis brought up, amid a national discussion about making community college free, was whether or not to make truck driver training free or giving 0 percent loans for the cost of school. Additionally, Innis said regulations prohibiting truckers under age 21 from driving across state lines should be scrapped.

“If you can drive from Miami to Jacksonville, which is eight hours, shouldn’t you be able to drive from Jacksonville to Charleston, which is four?” Innis said. “So you see, these are the things that he needs to be talking with the industry about, and maybe taking steps to address. And with just those little things, even if you pick up 10 or 15 percent of capacity, you have really moved things forward, maybe enough to start to gradually bring down the backlog.”

But defenders of the Biden administration say the supply chain breakdowns are complications of the increased demand, not any mismanagement at the top.

Jason Miller, associate professor of supply chain management at the Michigan State University Eli Broad College of Business, echoed the sense the blame for supply chain issues should be placed on increased demand and not Buttigieg.

ā€œThe disruptions the import supply chain is experiencing are due to record demand for imports due to record consumer spending on durable goods,” Miller said. “As such, there is nothing Secretary Buttigieg could truly do in such a scenario.”

Indeed, as Miller pointed out, waterborne containerized imports by weight through the first nine months of 2021 are up 17 percent from the first nine months of 2019, according to data from the Census Bureau obtained from USA Trade Online.

“This is why I like to characterize the import supply chain as strained due to record demand, as opposed to broken,” Miller concluded.

Innis, however, said ascribing supply chain issues to the simple increase in demand for goods ā€” while valid in some respects ā€” was over-simplifying matters, pointing out supply chain issues include goods produced and distributed domestically.

“Meat is not being imported from China,” Innis said. “It’s not sitting on a container, nor is bread, nor paper products nor all of these things that aren’t showing up in our stores. My nephew works at Whole Foods. He says they’re getting half shipments from companies. That is not sitting out on the ocean. And so, I’m not buying it across every category.”

Lisa Anderson, a supply chain expert and blogger with the Claremont, Calif.-based LMA Consulting Group, said Buttigieg has fallen short in his role as transportation secretary amid the supply crisis, concluding with respect to objections over his performance: “Unfortunately, the criticism is warranted.”

Among the tasks Buttigieg should take on, Anderson said, are touring the ports, talking to truck drivers and owner operators to understand the constraints from the front lines, coordinating with groups such as the Inland Empire Economic Partnership, the center of the logistics supply chain and conduit from Asia to the rest of the United States and finding ways to bridge government interests with business interests for the common good.

“It is a complex issue and will require strong leadership, involvement, collaboration, innovation and new thinking (breaking the traditional thinking) to resolve,” Anderson concluded.

Right-wing critics have seized on the supply chain issues and turned them into an indictment of the transportation secretary, who with his spouse Chasten Buttigieg, is a new parent, electing to stay on paternity leave for two months as the crisis unfolded.

Fox News’s Tucker Carlson, in a segment last month calling Buttigieg missing in action over the supply chain crisis, speculated Buttigieg may have taken off work “learning how to breast feed,” which defenders of Buttigieg denounced as a homophobic attack (although the snide comment could easily be made of a man in an opposite-sex relationship opting to go on paternity leave). Later, Carlson in a subsequent segment posited affirmative action is only the reason Buttigieg has the role of transportation secretary, implying the position was given to the former South Bend mayor and presidential candidate simply because he’s gay.

Innis, distancing himself from other critics in right-wing media despite his conservative political affiliations, said he was “not going to criticize” Buttigieg’s decision to go on paternity leave, which he called “something that is a part of life.”

The coronavirus pandemic, which disrupted livelihoods and economies from top to bottom across the globe, has also been identified as a factor in complications with the global supply chain, regardless of the administration in power.

Mahour Parast, a professor at Arizona State University’s School of Sustainable Engineering and the Built Environment who specializes in supply chain risk and resilience management, said ā€œexternal shocksā€ can be in play with such systems and pointed to coronavirus as an example of such a disruption.

“A supply chain that is designed to be efficient (e.g. cost-effective) cannot be simultaneously resilient to disruptions,” Parast said. “This means that when disruptions such as COVID happen, the supply chain has difficulty to be responsive (because the entire system is designed to be efficient and to minimize cost). To be efficient, redundancy should be eliminated because redundancy adds cost to the system. To be resilient, redundancy is needed because it increases a systemā€™s responsiveness.”

As an example of an eliminated redudancy that could end up being needed in a supply chain crisis, Parast pointed to the decision to move operations overseas to benefit from lower production cost or access to raw materials, which he said leads to cost savings at the expense of responsiveness and agility.

“One can make supply chains more resilient by regionalizing supply chain operations in which case there are several locations to back up each other in case of disruptions,” Parast said.

The Biden administration, for its part, has declared steps it would take to ease supply chain issues, mostly consistent with the dispersement of U.S. government money as a short-term solution. On Tuesday, the White House announced funding for a pop-up container yard project underway at the Port of Savannah, a $420 million grant program for ports and marine highways launched within the next 45 days and identifying coastal and waterway projects by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers construction.

The White House announcement comes days after President Biden signed into law the bipartisan infrastructure package after months of negotiations among lawmakers, which he was set on Wednesday to promote at an event at the Port of Baltimore.

In his defense, Buttigieg has said in media appearances that supply chain issues aren’t the result of mismanagement, but prosperity and suppliers not being able to keep up under Biden administration policies seeking to lift the country up from economic stagnation.

Buttigieg, appearing on a CNN segment last month with Jake Tapper to respond to criticism about supply chain issues, said the problem exists because “retail sales are through the roof.”

“If you think about those images of ships, for example, waiting at anchor on the West Coast, you know, every one of those ships is full of record amounts of goods that Americans are buying because demand is up, because income is up, because the president has successfully guided this economy out of the teeth of a terrifying recession,” Buttigieg said. “Now the issue is, even though our ports are handling more than they ever have, record amounts of goods coming through, our supply chains canā€™t keep up.”

In June, the Biden administration set up a supply chain disruptions task force, which is led by the secretaries of commerce, transportation, and agriculture and charged with focusing on areas where a mismatch between supply and demand has been evident: homebuilding and construction, semi-conductors, transportation and agriculture and food.

A Department of Transportation spokesperson, asked by the Washington Blade to comment for this article, said Buttigieg in his role as co-chair of the Task Force “is focused on ensuring that the Department is doing all it can to address these issues and has made progress along the way.”

Among other examples, the spokesperson pointed to the Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach announcing they would expand hours of operation; new support for paid apprenticeship programs in the truck driving industry; and Union Pacific railroad announcing it would go to 24/7 operations.

Innis, at the end of the day, rejected the idea Buttigieg’s hands were tied, saying despite increased demand causing blockages in the supply chain “there are steps that can be taken to ease it, and those are not being taken.”

“When you drill down into certain product categories, there are severe problems that aren’t being addressed that have nothing to do with the oceans, or even the trains,” Innis said. “Because your bread isn’t riding on a train. It’s on a truck coming from a local area. And these shortages are real. You walk through the grocery store, you see it.”

Advertisement
FUND LGBTQ JOURNALISM
SIGN UP FOR E-BLAST

Congress

Sens. Butler, Smith introduce Pride in Mental Health Act to aid at-risk LGBTQ youth

Bill is backed by Democrats in both chambers

Published

on

U.S. Sen. Laphonza Butler (D-Calif.) speaks at the International LGBTQ Leaders Conference on Nov. 30, 2023. (Washington Blade photo by Michael Key)

U.S. Sens. Laphonza Butler (D-Calif.) and Tina Smith (D-Minn.) introduced the Pride in Mental Health Act on Thursday, legislation that would strengthen resources in mental health and crisis intervention for at-risk LGBTQ youth.

ā€œAccessing mental health care and support has become increasingly difficult in nearly every state in the country,ā€Ā said Butler, who is the first Black LGBTQ senator. ā€œBarriers get even more difficult if you are a young person who lacks a supportive community or is fearful of being outed, harassed, or threatened.”

“I am introducing the Pride in Mental Health Act to help equip LGBTQ+ youth with the resources to get the affirming and often life-saving care they need,” she said.

ā€œMental health care is health care,” said Smith. “And for some LGBTQ+ youth, receiving access to the mental health care they need can mean the difference between living in safety and dignity, and suffering alone through discrimination, bullying, and even violence.ā€Ā 

The Minnesota senator added that data shows LGBTQ students are experiencing “an epidemic” of “anxiety, depression and other serious mental health conditions.”

For example, a 2023 study by The Trevor Project found that 54 percent of LGBTQ youth reported symptoms of depression, compared to 35 percent of their heterosexual counterparts.

Joining the senators as cosponsors are Democratic U.S. Sens. Ed Markey (Mass.), Bob Casey (Penn.), Peter Welch (Vt.), Alex Padilla (Calif.), Jeff Merkley (Ore.), Cory Booker (N.J.), and Tammy Baldwin (Wis.). Baldwin was the first LGBTQ woman elected to the House in 1999 and the first LGBTQ woman elected to the Senate in 2013.

Leading the House version of the bill are LGBTQ Democratic U.S. Reps. Sharice Davids (Kan.), Eric Sorensen (Ill.), and Ritchie Torres (N.Y.), along with 163 other House members.

Organizations that have backed the Pride in Mental Health Act include the Human Rights Campaign, GLSEN, American Academy of Pediatrics, National Education Association (NEA), National Center for Transgender Equality, Seattle Indian Health Board, PFLAG National, The Trevor Project, American Psychological Association, Whitman-Walker Institute, InterACT: Advocates for Intersex Youth, National Alliance on Mental Illness, American Federation of Teachers (AFT), Mental Health America, and Center for Law and Social Policy.

Continue Reading

Congress

Before TikTok, the U.S. took action over national security concerns with Grindr

House voted to pass TikTok ban on Wednesday

Published

on

Grindr's IPO at the New York Stock Exchange (Screen capture: YouTube/NYSE)

In a bipartisan vote of 352-65 on Wednesday, the U.S. House of Representatives cleared a bill that would force a divestiture of TikTok by its Chinese parent company ByteDance or ban the video sharing platform’s use in the U.S.

While the legislation faces an uncertain path to passage in the U.S. Senate, Wednesday’s vote provided additional evidence of the extent to which lawmakers are concerned about U.S. national security risks that could stem from TikTok.

More specifically, as recent years have seen relations between the U.S. and China become more fraught than they have been since the two countries first established diplomatic ties in 1979, questions have been raised about the access government leaders in Beijing might have to data from America’s 150 million TikTok users who are active on the platform each month.

Concerns have also been raised about whether and how the platform’s content moderation policies, algorithmic recommendation engine or other features might be manipulated to advance Chinese interests ā€” including, potentially, by sowing political strife in the U.S. or manipulating or undermining American elections.

Many of these claims are speculative, lacking the type of evidence that might be required if they were presented in a court of law. Nevertheless, for purposes of forcing a divestiture through an act of Congress or a decision by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, they are sufficient.

CFIUS is a nine-member interagency panel that adjudicates questions of whether business transactions between foreign buyers and U.S. targets may raise national security concerns. Since 2020, the committee has investigated TikTok because the platform was created by ByteDance’s 2017 purchase of U.S. startup Musical.ly.

The probe led to negotiations over a deal in which American user data from TikTok would be sold to U.S. based multinational computer technology company Oracle, which would vet and monitor the platform’s algorithms and content moderation practices ā€” but Axios reported on Monday that talks between TikTok and CFIUS have stalled for months.

Parallels to Grindr case

As directed by CFIUS, in 2020, Grindr, the location-based app used primarily by gay and bisexual men and transgender or gender diverse communities, was sold by the Chinese-based Beijing Kunlun Tech to San Vicente Acquisition, a firm that was incorporated in Delaware.

According to Reuters, Kunlun’s failure to notify CFIUS when the company purchased Grindr in 2018 was likely one of the reasons the committee decided to force the divestiture and thereby unwind an acquisition that, by that point, had been consummated for two years.

While CFIUS does not share details about the specific nature of national security risks identified with transactions under its review, reporting at the time suggested concerns with Grindr had to do with the Chinese government’s potential to blackmail Americans, potentially including American officials, with data from the app.

Cooley LLP, an international law firm with attorneys who practice in the CFIUS space, notes that the committee uses a “three-part conceptual framework” to assess national security threats:

  1. What is the threat presented by the foreign personā€™s intent and capabilities to harm U.S. national security?
  2. What aspects of the U.S. business present vulnerabilities to national security?
  3. What would the consequences for U.S. national security be if the foreign person were to exploit the identified vulnerabilities?

The firm writes that “issues that have raised perceived national security risks range from the obvious (e.g., foreign acquisitions of U.S. businesses with federal defense contracts) to the seemingly benign (e.g., foreign minority investments in offshore wind farm projects or online dating apps.)

Cooley additionally notes that CFIUS considers vulnerabilities such as “whether the U.S. business deals in ‘critical technology,’ ‘critical infrastructure’ or ‘sensitive personal data'” and threats such as “the foreign buyerā€™s/investorā€™s track record of complying with U.S. and international laws (e.g., export controls, sanctions and anti-corruption regimes.)”

Some critics argue CFIUS has been overzealous in enforcing investment restrictions against Chinese buyers, but assuming this may be true ā€” and putting aside questions of whether U.S. national security concerns are best served by this approach ā€” China’s foreign direct investment has “declined considerably,” according to another global law firm with a substantial CFIUS practice, Morgan Lewis & Bockius LLP.

The firm notes heightened scrutiny has been applied particularly in cases of “Chinese investment in the U.S. biotechnology industry,” while Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld highlighted CFIUS’s expanded jurisdiction over Chinese investments in U.S. real estate ā€” noting, however, that the committee’s increased authority is “unlikely to satisfy members of Congress and state legislators who want to prohibit investments in agricultural and other land by investors from ‘countries of concern’ such as China.”

Two years after the finalization of Grindr’s divestiture in 2020, the company went public on the New York Stock Exchange and enjoyed a 400 percent rise in its stock price. Its current value is $1.75 billion.

TikTok is privately owned, but Angelo Zino, a vice president and senior equity analyst at CFRA Research, told CNBC that the platform’s U.S.-only business ā€œcould fetch a valuation north of $60 billionā€ if Congress passes the bill to force its divestiture from ByteDance.

Continue Reading

Congress

AOC’s announcement of new bill quotes a group with history of anti-LGBTQ advocacy

NCOSE still has ties to extremists

Published

on

U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) (Screen capture: YouTube/MSNBC)

A press release issued on March 7 by the office of U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) included quoted remarks from the CEO of the National Center on Sexual Exploitation, a group with a history of anti-LGBTQ advocacy that was previously named Morality in Media.

The release concerns a bipartisan, bicameral bill that was introduced by Ocasio-Cortez to fight the proliferation of non-consensual, sexually explicit “deepfake” media ā€” created by “software, machine learning, artificial intelligence, or any other computer-generated or technological means” ā€” by establishing a federal civil right of action for victims.

ā€œRep. Ocasio-Cortez is leading a bipartisan bill to stop nonconsensual deepfake pornography that centers survivorsā€™ civil right of action,” the congresswoman’s chief of staff, Mike Casca, said in a statement to the Washington Blade on Saturday. “Organizations from left, right, and center support it.ā€

Separately, in a discussion about these topics on X, Casca said, “I disagree that quoting a group in a release is an endorsement of that group, especially at a time when gop support is required to pass anything in the house & the senate, nonetheless ‘partnering’ with them.”

Remarks by NCOSE CEO Dawn Hawkins that were included in the announcement from Ocasio-Cortez’s office are inoffensive and germane to the legislation. For instance, she said “it is past time that our laws catch up and hold the perpetrators of this abuse accountable,” calling the measure “a critical step forward” in securing “justice for survivors through civil remedies.”

Primarily focused on opposing pornography, NCOSE has sought to distance itself from the avowed anti-LGBTQ positions that were held by the organization and its leadership in the past, but there is ample reason to doubt the narrative that the group underwent an ideological evolution.

Hawkins authored a statement on behalf of her organization in December 2023 that promised to fight against the sexual exploitation of LGBTQ victims and expressed “deep regret that there were moments in our organizationā€™s history prior to our leadership change in 2011, when remarks were made that were indeed anti-LGBTQ+.”

The statement also noted that “our former namesake, Morality in Media (MIM), was associated with actions that starkly contrast with our current values,” including possible advocacy against Disney’s extension of benefits to employees’ same-sex partners and a press statement “arguing that homosexuality is connected to crime.”

Casting doubt on the sincerity of these statements, along with Hawkins’ proclamation that “we do not tolerate statements and actions by current employees that spread harmful misinformation and hate towards any particular group or individual,” are the following facts:

  • NCOSE’s current general counsel Benjamin Bull previously served as chief counsel of the far-right legal advocacy group Alliance Defending Freedom, which the Southern Poverty Law Center has designated an anti-LGBTQ hate group. The attorney also served as executive director for ADF International.
  • During an interview with former Fox News host Bill O’Reilly, Bull praised a 2013 decision by the Supreme Court of India that re-criminalized LGBTQ sex.
  • Amherst College professor Hadley Arkes, a conservative political scientist with longstanding ties to NCOSE — he was listed as a board member on the group’s 2022 990 form — supports the discredited practice of conversion therapy, which is banned in 20 U.S. states. When delivering public remarks in 2021, he said, “Weā€™ve had many people who, with therapy and conversion, just have come out away from that life.”
  • Arkes also opposes same-sex marriage. During the same event in 2021, he compared the decision by gay and lesbian couples to wed with the choice to shoot heroin. Close to the end of his two-hour lecture, the professor conceded that, ā€œI think Iā€™ve said enough to offend everybody tonight.”
  • Hawkins organized a conference in South Africa in 2022 whose keynote address was delivered by Errol Naidoo, an anti-LGBTQ minister who has blamed abortion and the “homosexual agenda” for”a culture of death” in his country and was quoted in a Nigerian newspaper as saying “I hate gays. It runs against Godā€™s wishes.”
  • Also delivering a presentation during the conference was Sharon Slater, president of Family Watch International. The SPLC lists the organization as an anti-LGBTQ hate group, noting that Slater has claimed LGBTQ people are more prone to disease, more promiscuous, and likelier to engage in pedophilia.
  • Slater has also defended the criminalization of LGBTQ conduct by African countries like Uganda and forged close relationships with proponents of these policies like Ugandan pastor Martin Ssempa, who supported the law passed last year that imposes prison sentences for homosexuality (and the death penalty, in certain cases).

Along with the bill introduced last week by Ocasio Cortez, the DEFIANCE Act, NCOSE is a major supporter of the Kids Online Safety Act ā€” another bipartisan legislative effort to combat the sexual exploitation of minors along with other harms facilitated by Big Tech and social media companies.

Earlier iterations of KOSA drew opposition from LGBTQ and civil rights groups over concerns that, for instance, the law might suppress affirming or pro-LGBTQ online content or prevent queer youth from accessing online communities.

On Feb. 15, however, a coalition of seven national LGBTQ organizations wrote a letter to U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), who introduced KOSA along with Republican U.S. Sen. Marsha Blackburn (Tenn.), informing him that they would no longer oppose the bill.

Signed by GLAAD, GLSEN, the Human Rights Campaign, PFLAG National, the National Center for Lesbian Rights, the National Center for Transgender Equality, and The Trevor Project, the letter thanked Blumenthal for “hearing our concerns” and “updating the legislation to address potential adverse consequences for LGBTQ+ youth.”

For years, Congress has sought to pass legislation to curb the power of market-dominant tech platform companies and hold these firms accountable for harms they have facilitated. More recently, many lawmakers have agreed on the need for a bipartisan federal privacy law and regulations targeting emerging technologies like artificial intelligence ā€” but so far have failed to pass any.

Support among Republicans and Democrats for bills like KOSA and the DEFIANCE Act were bolstered by the Senate Judiciary Committee’s hearing on online child sexual exploitation at the end of January, where the senators grilled the CEOs of TikTok, Discord, Snap Inc. (Snapchat), X (formerly Twitter), and Meta (which owns Facebook and Instagram).

Meanwhile, the Republican-controlled U.S. House is preparing to vote on a bill that would force the divestiture of TikTok by its Chinese parent company ByteDance or ban the popular video sharing platform in the U.S.

While the measure would have to overcome opposition from Senate Democrats to pass, bipartisan support comes because of the national security risks presented by TikTok along with concerns about the harms suffered by American users ā€” even though the evidence for some of these claims is scant, unclear, or disputed.

Continue Reading
Advertisement
Advertisement

Sign Up for Weekly E-Blast

Follow Us @washblade

Advertisement

Popular