Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis announced that he would help assist the supply chain crisis and play a key role in keeping Florida ports open and ready for businesses to move their cargo through the Sunshine State. This is after Biden administration officials announced that Americans are going to see a shortage of products on the shelves, an increase of cost in items, and rising gas prices this holiday season. So much for President Biden’s promise to “build back better.” Most Americans would take a “few mean Trump tweets” over empty shelves right about now.
DeSantis announced that the state of Florida will do what they can to alleviate some of the log jams in California and New York, which is essentially clogging parts of the supply chain. He pointed out how there are images surfacing of all of the ships docked off the coast in a big logjam, adding that it’s impacting what we see on the store shelves. He notes that it will also ease the problems with increased costs, inflation, and higher food prices.
While Florida has always been committed to reliable, modern, and accessible port facilities, Desantis adds that they’ve allocated almost a billion dollars to over 70 Florida seaport projects. He said these approaches have made them a “very strong state” and that he has been committed to these projects since becoming governor in 2019.
He is even offering incentive packages to businesses that want to move their cargo through some of their ports, including the one at JAXPORT.
“It really really is the model for the rest of the country. We’re here. We have capacity. This will make a huge difference. If you think about a place like JAXPORT, you have close to 100 million consumers that live within one day’s drive of JAXPORT. And I think companies are noticing. They’re noticing that Florida could be the solution for some of these logistical problems,” DeSantis explained.
Some of the shipping container companies are even rerouting to JAXPORT, where they could bring an additional 1,000 containers through Jacksonville per week. DeSantis said it is significant since it’s been “many years” since a European company came through Jacksonville, noting that some of their ports even accommodate the ships without backup. He said Florida seaports are already used to working around the clock.
DeSantis emphasized how his 15 ports have the capacity to accommodate the bottleneck in the global supply chain and clean up the Biden Administration’s mess. He has also credited his state for its post-pandemic economic success related to an open economy. While many GOP officials warned Democrats that a shutdown economy would result in high demand and less product, the damage was done. Despite the criticism, DeSantis kept Florida businesses largely open throughout the past year and said they had “more success” as a result.
Biden administration officials are still scrambling to get together shipping executives, port officials, and labor workers together to solve the problem and unload the freight. Some truck drivers note that the Washington crane operators belong to powerful liberal unions and have been “lazy” in moving the cargo.
“In 15 years of doing this job, I’ve never seen them work slower. The crane operators take their time, like three to four hours to get just one container. You can’t say anything to them, or they will just go [help] someone else,” one trucker complained.
Others note that people don’t seem to be working together to get the jobs done. They said it is a reflection of the management and that most managers are “too afraid” to talk to their supervisors as they could get fired if they don’t like them. Biden talked about building back better and unity, but all he can do is hand off the mess he made to Florida and cause more fights.
