Thursday, as ports across the nation deal with ongoing supply chain issues, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg praised the Biden administration’s “extraordinary achievements” in solving the crisis in time for the Christmas holiday.
The White House recently delivered $241 million in taxpayer funds to help U.S ports fund infrastructure improvements.
During an interview on CNBC’s “Squawk Box,” Buttigieg argued that “shelves are stocked” in big stores such as Walmart and Target, but he acknowledged it wasn’t “a mission accomplished.”
“If you were looking at the headlines a couple of months ago, they were saying every shelf would be empty, Christmas was ruined, basically canceled, and you look at what’s actually happened, shelves are stocked,” Buttigieg outlined. “You look at Walmart, Target. They’re talking more inventory than they did a year ago. Ports on the West Coast, for example, the ones we’ve been so concerned about, moving a record number of goods about 15% more than their all-time high. The National Retail Federation predicting the best year ever for holiday sales. So, a lot has gone right thanks to the leadership and the administration, thanks to the leadership in the private sector that got creative about how to get things done.”
He continued, “And, of course, maybe most importantly of all, thanks to a lot of essential workers who never had the option of coming into work via Zoom, getting it done, whether it’s at the ports or the truck drivers on the road or in the warehouses making it possible. That’s not to say we haven’t had issues in terms of pressure on prices and shipping, timing, but if you look at the big picture, it’s extraordinary what has been done in order to make sure that we’ve had the holiday season that we have right now where if you run for some last-minute shopping you will see the shelves are stocked. Now, having said that, this was not a mission accomplished moment because we’ve got a lot of work to do.”
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