The great supply chain robbery

A billion here, a billion there, and pretty soon, criminals have made off with tens of billions of dollars in precious cargo — every year. That’s the basic sales pitch by the supply chain lobby for the Combating Organized Retail Crime Act of 2025, or CORCA, introduced in the House and Senate in April.

“Cargo theft has become a sophisticated, coordinated threat impacting every link in the supply chain—not just railroads, but also truckers, retailers, manufacturers, and ports,” said Association of American Railroads President Ian Jefferies in a statement to the Washington Examiner. “In 2024 alone … Class I railroads saw a 40% increase in [cargo theft] incidents year-over-year.”

Jefferies’s trade association believes this is a “national issue that demands a unified federal response to protect

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