Airforwarders Association’s top exec calls on White House to consider various legislative priorities

Late last month, Brandon Fried, Executive Director of the Washington, D.C.-based Airforwarders Association (AfA), a diverse coalition comprise of more than 275 companies with more than 500,000 employees focused on moving cargo efficiently and quickly throughout the supply chain, penned a letter to President Joe Biden.

In the letter, Fried addressed, on behalf of AfA membership, that the White House consider various priorities, as agencies within the new administration set their legislative agenda for the coming years.

The priorities cited by Fried, include:

• infrastructure upgrades needed to relieve airport and port congestion, which cause significant delays, coupled with those delays creating environmental concerns;
• the classification of forwarders and transportation workers as essential employees, with these workers currently operating at diminished capacity, which is impacting the distribution of critical goods, making it imperative that they are deemed essential and become eligible for immediate vaccination;
• supply chain security, which is needed to support uninterrupted delivery of the vaccine and related medical supplies;
• trade facilitation in order to keep global trade lanes open and recognizing the role of international trade in supporting the end goals of the White House’s supply chain-focused executive order; and
• regulatory reviews, asking the White House to make it a priority to review and consider revising several business ordinances that are preventing progress and inhibiting efficiency across various businesses   

Logistics Management Group News Editor Jeff Berman spoke with Fried about the letter he wrote to President Biden. Their conversation follows below.

LM: What, in your opinion, are the biggest infrastructure-related needs, as they relate to the supply chain and logistics?

Fried: First and foremost, we want to see enhancements to highway infrastructure and roads. That is important, because if we don’t address this for the highways, freight is going to be moving slower…what we are seeing now with the onslaught of significant volumes coming into the ports is that trucks are clogging up so it is important that we have adequate spending, especially to coincide with the recovery because our highways will once again become congested. And they have not been as congested over the course of the pandemic mainly because most of the workforce has been home…but this is a problem that will resurge probably in short order. Now that the vaccination efforts are moving along, we are going to be getting back to the office, too, so highway spending is essential and is closely followed by airport and port infrastructure spending as well. We have seen dramatic increases in volumes at the seaports, too, which are creating various issues.

LM: What about airport infrastructure needs?

Fried: Airport congestion is near and dear to us. Again, there are a lot of reasons why and you cannot point to just one reason. Certainly, it is related to antiquated facilities and inadequate freight warehousing and road systems within airports contributing to a lot of this congestion. The only way to fix things at a lot of these airports is to invest in renovations and the restructuring that a lot of these airports need….we talk about it but really never seem to hit the mark adequately. We hope the White House looks at this seriously. If the U.S. wants to become the competitive trading partner with the world and wants to be productive internally, it needs to have good roads, seaports and, of course, airports.

LM: How are you viewing the need for transportation workers to get access to quicker vaccinations?

Fried: I want to make it clear we need to get essential medical people vaccinated first…and I think we already passed that threshold. The next essential group needs to be transport workers at the ports. Why? They are in close proximity to one another. One of the other reasons is for the port congestion is the lack of dockworkers available, because many of them have been impacted by COVID-19 and the same applies to airport workers and, of course, truckers as well.

The fact that we get them inoculated, the more of them show up to work, and then the faster we can get cargo into the hands of consumers, too. It is a very logical progression. So, where are we? We have not seen the progress we were hoping to see. We sent letters to 12 state commissioners of health in states where major airport gateways preside, and we got “some” response, with transport workers in upper tiers of some states’ priorities…but we need to move faster. It is my hope, at this point, that with the advent of additional vaccines coming onto the market that we will see an increase in that velocity.

At the Port of Los Angeles, for example, you have detention and demurrage issues and blank sailings, container imbalance, congestion, labor shortage. Gene Seroka, POLA executive director, says you need a healthy workforce to make the port work, and that is absolutely right so why would we not be vaccinating those essential workers quickly?

LM: What are the biggest issues you see related to supply chain security?

Fried: One of the areas we have seen in the past year, in terms of supply chain security concerns, is cybersecurity issues like ransomware attacks on the industry. We saw some very highly visible ones with the Forward Air ransomware attack over Christmas week, which reportedly cost the company $7.5 million. As a country, we are not doing enough to fight this—the last administration did not do enough and I don’t know if this administration can do enough to really work hard at this. Otherwise “these bad guys are going to continue to steal our lunch money” and will adversely impact our supply chain even more. That is a big issue and we are all extremely concerned about some policies coming out of DHS regarding security and, more specifically, air cargo security, and we are working with them now on a significant threshold that is coming in June, when the Account Consigner Regime overseas ends, and we are working closely with DHS and TSA in crafting sensible solutions to keep the regime going in a safe and secure manner. The Account Consigner Regime is not here in the U.S., but the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) has recommended that the Account Consigner Regime being used overseas be phased out by June 30, 2021….and since the U.S. is a subscriber to ICAO, it has a regulatory response to it we call a security framework in anticipation. We are working pretty diligently as that deadline approaches. It will largely impact all cargo in aircraft coming in but it is also another chapter in the unfolding air carrier book that we have always been a part of, too.

LM: How do you view things on the global trade side of things?

Fried: The Made in America executive order is laudable, but, at the same time, we have to realize we live in a global economy and that is why it is essential to keep trade lanes open. We cannot minimize the value of global trade in making our economy successful.

A lot of our members obviously play a significant role in moving goods, not only within the U.S. but between countries. I think that not only impacts their businesses but it also benefits U.S. businesses that depend on global trade. Focusing on Made in America is good, but I also think that we cannot forget that we are citizens of a global economy and global trade is now back to life, and it is not going to end. And the White House needs to realize that going forward in rebuilding the U.S. economy that global trade needs to be part of that.

LM: And what about what needs to happen in regards to regulatory reviews?

Fried: I would say that there are a lot of regulations that the White House will want to review…there are a lot of regulations we are watching and always do. One good example is the pilot program for under-21 people driving tractor trailers

People act surprised but the U.S. army does it so we need to be at least considering that. We really need to look at the port demurrage and detention issue going on in ports right now. The Federal Maritime Commission (FMC) is looking at it again. It seems to me that these steamship lines are profiting from a problem they are creating. The federal government needs to step in and work through that. There has been some guidance but not enough is being done to fix it at this point. We’ve also been looking at unmanned aerial vehicles like drones, and they are going to become more and more a fact of life. Drones are currently making scheduled runs on an experimental basis in Canada. We hope the administration takes a serious look at that because who knows what is going to happen with that technology over the next 10 years. The other thing to watch is electric vehicles, of course. It is interesting in that the technology, in many cases, far outpaces policy. These things are on the horizon, and I think the White House needs to be anticipating some type of policy response to them.

LM: How would you assess the ongoing vaccine distribution efforts?

Fried: I will start by saying the supply chain is never dull, and really that has never been truer than over the last 12 months. The integrators have done a great job in getting the vaccines from city to city. But it turns out that may be the easiest part. It is also the boots on the ground efforts related to it. I am proud to say that AfA members have been extensively involved in supporting vaccine distribution efforts and have provided extensive support for the distribution of things like rubber gloves, PPE equipment, needles and gowns, too. That has required extensive support. I personally think there were probably a few missteps at the onset, in that it should have been a federal effort in which the federal government came to states and said this is how we are going to do that and this is how we are going to implement it. When you leave it to the states, it is well intentioned but you are going to have 50 different responses. In Maryland, for example, we are not doing well in that the vaccine supply is limited, or, at least, has been up to this point. Compared to the 1970s, when there was a swine flu epidemic, we got shots….it got done quickly and was a federal response that was efficient and it is not what is happening here. We cannot minimize the fact that supply is an issue, and I am hopeful that will be abating. That aside, I have been impressed by the heroic efforts of the supply chain and the people that work in the supply chain and the support we have seen, from the integrators, to the airlines to the truckers and the freight forwarders. It has been nothing short of heroic.