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President Joe Biden said that his administration, together with labor unions and companies, succeeded in averting a holiday season supply chain crisis.

WASHINGTON — The U.S. economy grew at a 2.3% rate in the third quarter, slightly better than previously thought, the Commerce Department said Dec. 22. But prospects for a solid rebound going forward are being clouded by the rapid spread of the latest variant of the coronavirus.

While the pandemic exacerbated weaknesses in the global supply chain, new opportunities for the trucking industry to grow domestically have also been uncovered.

Container traffic at the Port of Oakland is starting to pick up again amid the supply chain chaos. Cargo imports handled by the Port of Oakland increased 6.5% in November from a year earlier, the hub said in an emailed statement Dec. 15.

Near-shoring is one of the biggest economic transformations sparked by the pandemic: Shrink the length of the supply chain to keep production closer to its final destination and reduce the risk of some snag messing things up along the way.

The potential harm that a proposed federal vaccine mandate could have on trucking was spotlighted by an industry executive who outlined for lawmakers key challenges facing motor carriers as they work to deliver goods across an increasingly stressed supply chain.

WASHINGTON — To help alleviate ongoing supply chain woes, a senior transportation policymaker in the U.S. Senate suggested federal agencies as well as industries look to ports along the Great Lakes.

Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said that U.S. reliance on foreign supply chains has proved a vulnerability and that the country needs to produce more critical goods domestically to protect its economic and national security.

McLane Co. Inc. announced Chris Smith joined the company as president of McLane Grocery, a $33 billion business unit that provides supply chain service to more than 70,000 retail locations.

Three core economic sectors of trucking are showing strength, but disruption from the omicron variant of the coronavirus hangs over the industry as it heads into 2022, American Trucking Associations Chief Economist Bob Costello said.