Mission
The FMC:
• Regulates certain activities of international shipping lines (called "ocean common carriers"), marine terminals operators, and ocean transportation intermediaries (OTIs) who operate in the U.S. foreign commerce
• Oversees the financial responsibility of cruise ship lines and other passenger ship operators, to ensure they have the resources to pay compensation for personal injuries or non-performance
• Monitors the laws and practices of foreign governments which could have a discriminatory or otherwise adverse impact on the U.S. shipping industry and U.S. maritime trade, and administers bilateral trade sanctions to persuade foreign governments to remove adverse conditions
• Enforces special regulatory requirements applicable to shipping lines owned or controlled by foreign governments (so-called “controlled carriers”)
• Reviews and regulates agreements between shipping lines and/or marine terminals (which enjoy statutory immunity from the antitrust laws) and service contracts between shipping lines and their customers
• Licenses and regulates ocean transportation intermediaries in the U.S., and ensures all maintain evidence of financial responsibility. These intermediaries include freight forwarders, who make bookings and process paperwork for shipper customers (roughly analogous to a travel agent for freight), and "non-vessel-operating common carriers", who act as resellers of space on shipping lines' vessels.
Read more about this topic: Federal Maritime Commission
Famous quotes containing the word mission:
“... [a] girl one day flared out and told the principal “the only mission opening before a girl in his school was to marry one of those candidates [for the ministry].” He said he didn’t know but it was. And when at last that same girl announced her desire and intention to go to college it was received with about the same incredulity and dismay as if a brass button on one of those candidate’s coats had propounded a new method for squaring the circle or trisecting the arc.”
—Anna Julia Cooper (1859–1964)
“We never can tell how our lives may work to the account of the general good, and we are not wise enough to know if we have fulfilled our mission or not.”
—Ellen Henrietta Swallow Richards (1842–1911)
“I cannot be a materialist—but Oh, how is it possible that a God who speaks to all hearts can let Belgravia go laughing to a vicious luxury, and Whitechapel cursing to a filthy debauchery—such suffering, such dreadful suffering—and shall the short years of Christ’s mission atone for it all?”
—D.H. (David Herbert)