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“If you watched the news recently, you’d think the shelves in all of our stores across the country are empty, that parents won’t be able to get gifts for their kids this holiday season,” Biden said. “But here’s the deal: For the vast majority of the country, that’s not what’s happening.”
The president praised actions his administration has taken to speed up operations and extend opening hours at key Southern California ports, as well as to facilitate faster transportation of goods.
Overall, Biden said “the shelves will be stocked” and that the US is “going into the holiday season in very strong shape.”
Biden said CEOs he met earlier this week “reported that they are depleted of inventories, the shelves are well stocked and they are ready to meet consumer demand for the holiday season.” The president hosted a roundtable at the White House with executives from Best Buy, Food Lion, Etsy, Walmart, Mattel, Samsung, CVS Health and others.
In October, in response to a backlog of container ships off the West Coast, the president announced that the Port of Los Angeles would transition to 24/7 service, bringing it in line with operations at the Port of Long Beach, which already was in operation. on a 24/7 schedule. Those two ports handle 40% of container traffic in the US.
“In the last month, the number of containers that remained on docks and blocked movement to those stores was more than eight days. Now it’s down 40%, meaning they’re getting to the shelves in stores faster,” he said. Biden. “That’s an incredible success story.”
The president also spoke of rising consumer prices that frustrate Americans across the country and said his administration has “used every available tool” to address the problem. The White House faces mounting pressure to cut skyrocketing prices at the pump, contributing to the biggest inflation spike in decades.
“This is a global challenge, a natural by-product to the global economy that is being shut down by the pandemic as it comes back to life,” Biden said, pointing to other countries such as the United Kingdom and Canada experiencing the same problem.
The president said: “Prices are still out of sync as the world bounces back. But as we continue to overcome these obstacles, price pressures will ease.”
He said the release of emergency oil reserves by the US, which is being conducted in conjunction with several other major countries, “will not solve the high gas prices overnight, but it has made a difference.”
In the past month, he said, “probably in part as a result of anticipating this move, we have seen the price of oil and gasoline in wholesale markets drop significantly.”
“Since the end of October, the average weekly price of gasoline in the wholesale market has fallen about 10%. That’s a drop of 25 cents a gallon. Those savings should hit the American people very soon, and it can’t happen soon enough.” said Biden.
The Department of Energy will release 50 million barrels of oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve — the largest release from the reserve in US history, Biden said. It is done in partnership with several other countries including China, India, Japan, the Republic of Korea, and the United Kingdom.
This story has been updated with additional information.
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Sources 2/ https://www.cnn.com/2021/12/01/politics/biden-supply-chain-holiday/index.html The mention sources can contact us to remove/changing this article |
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