WASHINGTON — Daniel Maffei is at once a crucial player in the campaign to subdue inflation and a figure virtually unknown outside the confines of his wonky Washington domain.
He is chair of the Federal Maritime Commission, a small, traditionally obscure institution that has been thrust into a central role in the Biden administration’s designs on taming soaring prices — a menace that could determine which party next controls Congress.
The commission regulates the international shipping industry at American ports, an element of modern life that is typically ignored but has emerged as a reason major retailers are short of popular goods, and why people renovating homes are waiting months for doorknobs.
Nine container shipping carriers — all of them foreign companies — dominate the market for moving goods between Asia and North America. For more than a year, the industry has been besieged by chaos, from traffic jams choking ports to a shortage of truck drivers impeding efforts to move cargo. With containers stuck on ships and stacked on docks, shortages and rising prices have become central features of these times.
The ocean carriers have multiplied their shipping rates and imposed a bewildering assortment of fees. The container shipping industry is on track to make $300 billion in profits before taxes and interest, according to Drewry, an industry research firm.
The White House has seized on these two realities — soaring prices and record profits for carriers.
“One of the reasons prices have gone up is because a handful of companies who control the market have raised shipping prices by as much as 1,000%,” President Joe Biden declared on Twitter in June. “It’s outrageous — and I’m calling on Congress to crack down on them.”
Days later, he signed into law the Ocean Shipping Reform Act, which is engineered to bolster the maritime commission’s authority.
Biden handed Maffei, a former member of the House of Representatives from central New York state, primary responsibility for taking on a major culprit in his narrative on inflation.
©2019 New York Times News Service