WHEREAS, The national supply chain, national economy, and international standing of the United States benefits from and depends on the airport, land port of entry, and seaport infrastructure that facilitates interstate and international trade by the state, its local governments, and its residents; and

WHEREAS, The state is experiencing the effects of an unprecedented global supply chain crisis, with disruptions to goods movement caused and exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic and surges in product demand, which outstrip equipment supply and availability; and

WHEREAS, The state’s goods movement system and supply chain have facilitated the lion’s share of the growth of United States trade, which in 2021 resulted in a 27 percent growth in the trade deficit to approximately $860,000,000,000, including a 14.5 percent increase in China trade of an additional $355,000,000,000 over the same time period; and

WHEREAS, The effects of the global supply chain crisis and the resulting disruptions to goods movement caused and exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic in the state are complex, pervasive, and acute; and

WHEREAS, These effects have resulted in numerous impacts to all modes of freight transportation and goods movement in the state; and

WHEREAS, Impacts of the supply chain crisis have caused unprecedented and unexpected congestion in ocean going vessel traffic at seaports, with the backup of vessels off the state’s coast or in transit to the state’s ports, which peaked in January 2022 at over 100 vessels, resulting in hundreds of thousands of containers delayed and off schedule for arrival at the state’s marine terminals; and

WHEREAS, The state’s marine terminals are processing more cargo than ever before, maintaining expanded gate hours, and processing more empty containers than ever before, but with constrained acreage and space and a lack of intermodal equipment availability for customers. As a result, the state’s marine terminals are congested, lack space for regular transactions, suffer from a dramatic climb in excessive dwell times, and deal with delayed and variable vessel sailing windows; and

WHEREAS, While experiencing the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic amongst its membership, the state’s workforce of longshore workers continues to add shifts, hours, and registrants to keep up with the unprecedented strain on marine terminal services; and

WHEREAS, Motor carriers and the trucking community continue to maintain their roles as frontline and essential service providers throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, see unprecedented growth in demand for drayage and local delivery during the supply chain crisis, and respond by adding as many new vehicles and drivers into the supply chain system as possible. However, they are limited in their amount of business by the lack of access to chassis and other intermodal equipment, excessive empty intermodal container storage on trucking terminals and occupying chassis, and full facilities or limited windows for transactions both at marine terminals and at warehouses and distribution centers; and

WHEREAS, The state’s warehouses and distribution centers continue to experience record levels of low vacancy and higher than expected inventory turnover, and suffer from secondary congestion impacts through other components of the supply chain, uncertainty in delivery schedules, and capacity constraints, which limit their ability to continue to receive or distribute cargo as effectively or efficiently as usual; and

WHEREAS, Impacts of the supply chain crisis have created unprecedented and unexpected strains on the railroads serving the state. These railroads have to manage not only the same backups and congestion and intermodal equipment availability challenges facing motor carriers and marine terminals, but also being the victim and target of organized and extensive cargo theft; and

WHEREAS, The COVID-19 pandemic demonstrates that access to the global supply chain in times of excessive demand is limited by extenuating factors beyond the control of Californians, and that the impacts of a lack of access to equipment, vessels, and foreign markets on the state’s cargo owners, importers, exporters, and economy, which relies on these cargo owners, is significant; and

WHEREAS, It is in the state’s interest to assist the state’s importers and exporters weathering increased costs of access to and from foreign and interstate markets, reduce the impacts of congestion, improve the efficiency of the supply chain, and minimize other negative externalities associated with the supply chain crisis, including increased emissions and degradations in air quality; and

WHEREAS, The state’s importers and exporters and the international trade that they facilitate are critical components of the state and national economy, directly or indirectly employing millions of Californians, contributing billions of dollars in economic activity, and generating significant local and state tax revenues as a result; and

WHEREAS, The development, improvement, expansion, and maintenance of the state’s importing and exporting of cargoes to and from farming, distribution, manufacturing, fabrication, assembly, processing, and warehousing sites in the state are essential to the growth of the state’s economic well-being and the ability of those businesses and workers associated with trade-related industries to continue to compete cost effectively on a regional, national, and global scale; and

WHEREAS, The impacts of the global supply chain crisis are driving costs and threatening access of the state’s importers and exporters to foreign markets, which threatens the sustainable economic growth of the state; and

WHEREAS, It is in the state’s and nation’s best interests to encourage the development and growth of California-originated and California-destined international and interstate cargoes, improve access to foreign markets for California’s goods by reducing the real costs of transportation, and create and support jobs provided by the state’s employers who can grow their import and export businesses and maintain their global competitiveness; now, therefore, be it