White House appoints Lyons to lead Supply Chain Task Force

Retired Gen. Stephen Lyons, former commander of the U.S. Transportation Command, will be the new port envoy to the Biden administration's Supply Chain Disruptions Task Force, the White House and U.S. Department of Transportation announced last week.

Lyons succeeds John Porcari, who had served as the envoy since the task force was established in 2021. In his new role, Lyons will work with the USDOT, the White House National Economic Council, ports, railroads, trucking firms and other private companies across national supply chains to continue addressing bottlenecks and speeding up the movement of goods, USDOT officials said in a press release.

For the past year, the task force has worked with ports and private companies to resolve immediate bottlenecks. For example, the task force worked with ports to propose a container dwell fee to reduce congestion at the ports; launched a trucking action plan to recruit and retain more drivers; funded pop-up container yards to get goods from ships to shelves faster while supporting agricultural exporters; moved supply chain operators toward 24/7 operations; and launched a data sharing effort with Target, FedEx, UPS, True Value, ocean shippers, ports and additional stakeholders to reduce shipping costs and ultimately consumer costs at the store.

"Global supply chains will remain fragile as long as the pandemic continues to disrupt ports and factories around the world, and a lot of work remains to reduce shipping delays and costs for American families. We are grateful that Gen. Lyons ... will now take on the role of ports and supply chain envoy, working across every level of government, labor and industry to strengthen America's supply chains," said U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg.