Yesterday, the Senate passed legislation (S. 3580) reauthorizing the Federal Maritime Commission and making changes in ocean shipping law designed to make force ocean carriers to move goods in and out of U.S. ports more quickly and efficiently.  The legislation, which was assembled by Sens. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) and John Thune (R-SD), passed the Senate by unanimous consent.

The Senate bill must now be reconciled with different House legislation. The House has now passed its ocean shipping bill not once, not twice, but three times:

• As its own individual piece of legislation (H.R. 4996), on December 8, 2021, by a vote of 364 to 60;
• As Division S of the America COMPETES Act (H.R. 4521, the China competition/microchip bill to which the House attached all manner of unrelated stuff) on February 4; and
• As Title IV of the FY 2023 Coast Guard reauthorization bill (H.R. 6865), which passed the House on March 29 by a vote of 378 to 46.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) said, immediately after the bill passed:

When the cost of shipping is higher, the cost of the goods are higher, and people have to pay too much–a whole lot more.
At the end of the day, it is the American consumer that pays the higher price. Thankfully, this bill will make it harder for ocean carriers to unreasonably refuse American goods at our ports while strengthening the Federal Maritime Commission’s ability to step in and prevent harmful practices by carriers.

A key focus of both bills is charges for “detention and demurrage” in container shipping – detention being the money that ports charge importers for not returning empty containers on time, and demurrage being the charges that shipping lines charge importers for not picking up their full containers on time. With U.S. seaports in such backlogged chaos in recent months, more importers than ever were complaining that they were being charged for D&D when it wasn’t their fault, and that it was difficult to impossible to dispute individual D&D charges.

D&D changes have bipartisan support, in part because they mostly align with an interpretive rule the FMC put in place under the Trump Administration, in May 2020. But having the force of law would allow significantly better enforcement, with both versions of the bill ramping up possible financial penalties.

There are other major differences between the House and Senate bills, listed below. It is not yet known which legislative route committee leaders will try to use to get a final bill through Congress this year, out of the three options they currently have.