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unidentified
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The Cardinals did not reach the two-thirds majority needed to elect a new pope. | |
| The Cardinals vote by secret ballot, and at the end of each vote, the ballots are burned in a stove with added color. | ||
| If the smoke is white, a new pope has been chosen. | ||
| There's no timeline for the conclave's decision. | ||
| Pope Francis was chosen in one day in 2013, while the election of Pope Gregory X in 1271 took just under three years. | ||
| The Cardinals will resume voting tomorrow. | ||
| With two votes in the morning and two in the evening until a consensus is reached. | ||
| C-SPAN will continue to provide coverage from the Vatican for the duration of the conclave and in the aftermath, including the new Pope's traditional address from St. Peter's Square. | ||
| C-SPAN, Democracy Unfiltered. | ||
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| Welcome back to Washington Journal. | ||
| We're joined now by Kerry Davis, President and CEO of the American Association of Port Authorities. | ||
| Kerry, welcome to the program. | ||
|
unidentified
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Mimi, good morning. | |
| Great to be here with you. | ||
| So tell us about your organization, the mission, and the ports that you represent. | ||
|
unidentified
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AAPA is the American Association of Port Authorities, and we're 114 years old. | |
| We're one of the oldest trade associations in Washington, D.C. | ||
| And we were founded because there were fires breaking out at the docks at seaports 114 years ago when there were no building standards. | ||
| Even today, fast forward 114 years, we work on a lot of the same sorts of issues, creating building standards and work standards at the seaports. | ||
| But we're fortunate to play in some of the largest public policy debates when the President and Congress are making decisions about national security, trade, infrastructure. | ||
| And so we have the opportunity to tell the story of the seaports here in Washington. | ||
| So who owns and operates those ports? | ||
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unidentified
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That's a great question. | |
| We're a hemispheric organization, so we actually have members from Canada, U.S., Latin America, Caribbean, 150 seaports all across the Western Hemisphere. | ||
| Every country kind of does their seaport system a little differently. | ||
| And here in the U.S., we don't really have a federal standard. | ||
| Port authorities are the major owners and overseers of the port infrastructure. | ||
| And they're chartered by cities, by counties, by states. | ||
| And in about half the cases of the ports, including some of the largest, they lease out the operations of those facilities to third parties called marine terminal operators. | ||
| You could almost think of a port like a mall owner. | ||
| The port owner owns the superstructure and the parking lot and leases out all of the stalls to marine terminal operators. | ||
| Some ports do operate all their facilities soup to nuts. | ||
| They're called operating ports. | ||
| And how is your organization funded? | ||
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unidentified
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Well, we're a membership-based organization. | |
| So all of the seaports pay into our organization to help be their collective voice and to work on collective issues. | ||
| And then we're also really fortunate to have all sorts of other companies across the maritime supply chain be parts of our organization. | ||
| Companies that have a stake in well-funded, well-functioning seaports. | ||
| truckers, rail companies, ocean carriers, workforce development groups. | ||
| More and more we're seeing tech companies, supply chain digitization companies, environmental resilience organizations and companies. | ||
| So as you can see, it's a very wide membership base. | ||
| But day in and day out, we always focus our work and our advocacy on the direct needs of port authorities, the owners of the port facilities. | ||
| Well let's talk about ports when it comes to tariffs. | ||
| This is a CNN article from yesterday. | ||
| The first boats carrying Chinese goods with 145% tariffs are arriving in LA. | ||
| Shipments are cut in half. | ||
| Expect shortages soon. | ||
| Break that down for us. | ||
| How are the ports kind of the canary in the coal mine when it comes to the impact that tariffs are going to have? | ||
|
unidentified
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Yeah, you said it great, Mimi. | |
| In many ways, we serve as the bellwether for what's about to happen in the economy. | ||
| And that's because as businesses, retailers, consumers stock up their inventories and prepare for the summer consumption season, the holiday consumption season, they're making purchasing decisions now, which are going to affect what the shelves look like weeks and months from now. | ||
| And what we saw in the early months of the year was an explosion of imports and exports, record-breaking imports and exports in the first few months of the year as businesses and consumers were pulling forward a lot of their buying decisions, | ||
| knowing that the tariffs were probably going to take place because President Trump, even before he took office, was telegraphing that he was going to renew a lot of the tariffs that he put in place in his first administration, which I actually worked on as an advisor to President Trump in his first administration. | ||
| So first few months, explosive numbers, very large. | ||
| We are now basically facing a cliff. | ||
| You cited the number 50%, possibly. | ||
| If you look at the average cargo falloffs of the 10, 15 largest ports in the country, we're probably looking at less than that. | ||
| Some good reporting, public reporting on that yesterday, perhaps around 20, 25%. | ||
| But yes, some of the largest gateways that do the most trade with China and Southeast Asia on the west coast of the United States, their cargo, imminent cargo falloffs are going to be upwards of about 40, 45 percent. | ||
| And that will obviously have an impact on inventories and shelves in coming weeks and months. | ||
| It says in the same article, the Port of LA had expected 80 ships to arrive in May. | ||
| 20% of those have been canceled. | ||
| Customers have already canceled 13 sailings for June. | ||
| So what happens when those shipments get canceled? | ||
| I mean, are we going to start seeing, when are we going to start seeing that on the shelves? | ||
| And I know that like Walmart and Target had kind of gone to the president and said we're going to have empty shelves. | ||
| What do you think is happening? | ||
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unidentified
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Of course, inventories are going to differ from industry to industry based on buying habits and what the commodity or the goods are. | |
| So you could look in differences of construction materials versus cars versus toys. | ||
| They're all going to have different timelines. | ||
| But overgeneralizing here, I think most business analysts are saying between five and seven weeks from now, we'll probably see significant price increases and shortages in household consumables that customers are expected to buy during the summer season. | ||
| So overgeneralization, but we're looking at about a month and a half to two months before we start seeing shortages per se. | ||
| So do we know what we should be buying now and stocking up? | ||
| I mean, is this going to be the kind of the pandemic shortages all over again? | ||
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unidentified
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I think businesses have probably been very smart and have planned for the current situation and have requisite inventories for the things they think consumers will be buying in early summer. | |
| And look, whether it's the ports or the business community generally or the markets, we all feel pretty confident that this president does know what he's doing and what he's driving at with renegotiated trade arrangements and trade deals with some of our largest trading partners. | ||
| I come back to my experience in the first Trump administration when we first imposed tariffs on China. | ||
| We had a very sophisticated analysis that we used to determine what we wanted to get out of China with our phase one trade agreement, which President Trump was able to get. | ||
| We looked at what American companies were selling in China and Southeast Asia, whether it was soy products, pork products, advanced manufacturing machinery. | ||
| We said if China weren't blocking our exports through tariffs and non-tariff barriers, very creative ways to keep American goods out, this is about the level of what we'd be selling. | ||
| In total, it was about $30 billion. | ||
| And through a lot of fast and hard work, we were able to get them to agree to that. | ||
| Now, the pandemic hit, president lost reelection, so that deal kind of got shelved for a while. | ||
| But the point is, there are very smart and aggressive trade negotiators in the government right now that are using the same sorts of analyses. | ||
| They know what India, Brazil, China should be buying from the U.S. | ||
| And I know they're working diligently on that. | ||
| Just this morning, we saw the announcement that China would be sitting down at the table in Switzerland with the top highest trade negotiators in the U.S. to try to de-escalate the situation. | ||
| So I don't think we need to worry about any panic buying right now. | ||
| I think we're headed towards a positive resolution of the angst that we might be feeling in the trade community. | ||
| If you'd like to talk to our guest, Carrie Davis, about the ports in the United States, the impact of tariffs on those ports, you can give us a call. | ||
| Our lines are bipartisan. | ||
| So Democrats are on 202-748-8000. | ||
| Republicans 202-748-8001. | ||
| And Independents 202-748-8002. | ||
| I want to ask you about the uncertainty and the effect that that might be having. | ||
| This is a Bloomberg article. | ||
| It says, one ship, $417 million in new tariffs, the cost of Trump's trade war. | ||
| So this ship was en route when the tariffs took effect. | ||
| How does that uncertainty that this is how much the tariffs are, no, we're going to get a deal? | ||
| No, we're not going to get a deal. | ||
| It's 145%, et cetera. | ||
| How does that play in when it when it how does that affect the ports and the economy as a whole? | ||
|
unidentified
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Yeah, it's a great question, Amy. | |
| I don't envy the amazing women and men who run seaports and are trying to make daily when the goalposts seem to be changing. | ||
| They're trying to make daily calculations as to what sorts of import taxes or tariffs their customers are going to face. | ||
| And seaports are major, critical infrastructure. | ||
| And so owners, managers of seaports are making literally billion-dollar decisions on a monthly and yearly basis about how to recapitalize the infrastructure at their facilities. | ||
| It's really hard to make those decisions, A, when the trading landscape is uncertain, but B, when there's inflationary pressures on construction and you don't necessarily know what the final bill of constructing a new dock, a new piling, a new pier, a new berth, a new dredging project might actually cost 12 months out, 16 months out, 24 months out. | ||
| Yes, it might seem on the surface like the carriers, that is the large ship-owning companies, are making the decisions about whether or not to sail. | ||
| But it's a collaborative decision that's made with the owners of the cargo as well, called the beneficial cargo owners or the shippers, the people who actually own the stuff that's in the boxes or in the hull of the ship. | ||
| And in some cases, it's the shippers or the businesses that are shipping the stuff that are making the decision, hey, let's hold off on actually bringing that to shore because 30 months hence, situation might be different. | ||
| One thing that we're seeing an explosion of interest in is free trade zones. | ||
| These are geographical areas often co-located in the ports where businesses can bring inputs or goods into a zone. | ||
| You don't bring it into the economy. | ||
| You kind of just leave it there sitting until you have a better sense of what the tariff rate is going to be and then you can bring it into the country. | ||
| So you just store it there? | ||
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unidentified
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Yeah, basically we're seeing a, you know who's doing really, really, really well in these situations? | |
| The warehousing industry, just like they did really well during the pandemic as well. | ||
| When the consumer, the downstream and the tax situation is uncertain, there are all sorts of facilities, bonded facilities, free trade zones. | ||
| They all kind of get at the same thing, which is that businesses can hold their goods at bay until they have a little bit of a clearer picture of what the playing board's going to look like. | ||
| I want to play your portion of a cabinet meeting from last week. | ||
| President Trump commented on the decline of the number of ships coming in from Canada, and then I'll have you respond. | ||
| I know that China is doing very poorly right now. | ||
| I just saw some reports coming out, and I don't want that to happen to China. | ||
| I like the president a lot, President Xi. | ||
| I don't want it to happen. | ||
| I was actually saddened to hear it, but they are getting absolutely hammered in China. | ||
| And, you know, they're sending boats, the biggest boats in the world carrying cargo like nobody's ever seen before. | ||
| These are the biggest boats in the world, biggest cargo ships in the world. | ||
| And they're coming, and they're turning around in the Pacific Ocean. | ||
| They're doing a big U-turn and going back because they don't want the goods because 145% tariff. | ||
| But at a certain point, I hope we're going to make a deal with China. | ||
| We're talking to China, but their factories are closing all over China because we're not taking their product. | ||
| We don't want their product unless they're going to be fair with us. | ||
| What do you think? | ||
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unidentified
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Yeah, there's so much I read into the president's ultimate goals from that. | |
| He clearly wants, he clearly does not want to fully decouple from the U.S.'s third largest trading partner. | ||
| And I underline the word third because China was the U.S.'s largest trading partner, but Canada and Mexico both surpassed China in the last 14 months or so. | ||
| So let's keep perspective about who the United States does the most trade with. | ||
| But it's clear that the president doesn't want to fully decouple from China. | ||
| He just wants more fairness. | ||
| This is a word I was just sitting with the president's advisor, Kellyanne Conway, who helped him get elected in 2016. | ||
| And she could not have spent more time underlining how much the president cares about correcting past wrongs and fairness. | ||
| And sometimes that's tariff rates, and sometimes that's non-tariff barriers, saying, well, we don't, these American imports into China don't live up to Chinese standards, so we're not going to let them in. | ||
| Those are the types of unfair trading practices that the president's getting at. | ||
| So it's clear to me that he ultimately wants to rectify these past wrongs and ultimately keep a healthy trade relationship there. | ||
| But another thing is that the kind of flip side of that coin is while the president and his advisors and frankly so many political leaders on both sides of the aisle right now would love to see a renaissance in American manufacturing, whether it's ships or pharmaceuticals or chips or other nationally important and strategic items. | ||
| I don't think the president's averse at all to having other countries, most especially allied countries, come invest in those manufacturing facilities here in the U.S. Korean, Japanese, German, Austrian, Spanish, Italian. | ||
| So I don't think the president is so singularly focused on America owning all of American manufacturing. | ||
| There's a lot of great technology and trading partners that we can attract, even Chinese, that we can attract FDI foreign direct investment into the United States as long as those jobs are here and as long as we retain control over our supply chains for these critical governments. | ||
| And as you mentioned earlier, the U.S. and China, this is Reuters, U.S.-China to hold icebreaker trade talks in Geneva on Saturday. | ||
| So we will watch that and see what happens with that. | ||
| Let's take some calls. | ||
| We've got Walter in Baltimore, Maryland, Independent Line. | ||
| Hi, Walter. | ||
|
unidentified
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Good morning, C-SPAN, and good morning, America. | |
| To your guest, I thank him for his observations, but does the person in the White House really, do you believe he knows who Mao was? | ||
| Do you think he really understands that the Chinese 5,000-year history beats out a 50-year history? | ||
| Do you think he has a consciousness other than his own personal aggrandizement in a sense that these tariffs are not helping America? | ||
| I don't care about a child with $2 over $30. | ||
| That's a lie. | ||
| As he lies continually and consistently, I'm begging your guests not to get C-SPAN canceled as PBS and NPR are under threat by the clown. | ||
| Walter, C-SPAN is not funded by the government. | ||
| But we'll take your point and have Carrie Davis respond. | ||
|
unidentified
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Hey, Walter, thanks for that question. | |
| I noticed you were from Maryland. | ||
| The first thing I do in any conversation with a decision maker or someone who's interested about the healthy state of seaports is I cite the number of jobs and their state GDP that's supported by ports. | ||
| And the Port of Baltimore is one of the best that we have in the country. | ||
| It went through a pretty tough time with the Key Bridge collapse, but it's back up and running, frankly, due to a lot of great assistance from the federal government, the Coast Guard, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, and that port is back up and running. | ||
| Walter, there are 20,000 jobs in the state of Maryland and $1.8 billion of state GDP, which is supported by that port of Baltimore. | ||
| So a great shipping and port state. | ||
| Does the president know 5,000 years of Chinese history, as you point out? | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| I'm not sure he really cares either. | ||
| I think he knows who the trade negotiators are sitting across the table from him. | ||
| He's a deal maker and he wants to get something done to, again, right past wrongs that have been done to American exporters. | ||
| And there's been a lot of reporting on this lately, Walter, but the president has been very consistent about talking about the power of tariffs and protective measures to assist American jobs. | ||
| He's been talking about that apparently since the 80s and 90s. | ||
| So I would say he's been rather consistent about his position on that. | ||
| Here's Jack in Hamilton, Ohio, Republican. | ||
| Hi, Jack. | ||
|
unidentified
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Yeah, hey, Mr. Davis. | |
| What's the busiest port in America? | ||
| Jack, that's a great question. | ||
| And I didn't quite catch where Jack was from because I'd love to see. | ||
| Hamilton, Ohio. | ||
|
unidentified
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Hamilton, Ohio, Ohio, the state of Ohio, the great state of Ohio. | |
| 17, you wouldn't necessarily think of it as a maritime state, but it's got a lot of Great Lakes ports. | ||
| The state of Ohio, 17,000 jobs in the state and $2 billion of state GDP is supported by the ports of Toledo, the ports of Cleveland. | ||
| So a lot of good maritime trade happening in Ohio. | ||
| And the question was... | ||
| The busiest port in the United States. | ||
|
unidentified
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The busiest port in the United States. | |
| Great. | ||
| Great question. | ||
| There are a couple ways to measure this. | ||
| You could measure it by dollars. | ||
| You can measure it by volume. | ||
| But basically, the answer is flip-flopping back and forth between ports of LA, Long Beach, and ports of New York, New Jersey. | ||
| And there are a few reasons why that happens. | ||
| But this really New York, New Jersey took the lead a few years ago when the West Coast longshore workers were negotiating for their new contract. | ||
| And a lot of cargo was shifting to the east coast of the United States because of uncertainty in that situation. | ||
| The Panama Canal, of course, which is all over the news, has a lot to do with the shift of cargo from east to west. | ||
| But it basically goes back and forth between LA, Long Beach, and New York, New Jersey. | ||
| All right, Jack, does that answer your question? | ||
|
unidentified
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Yes, but I've got another question. | |
| So with all the goods that are coming in through these ports, and it's demand and supply, whatever the good is. | ||
| I'm going to go out and buy some golf balls today. | ||
| Isn't it really good for America's manufacturing and retail and the goods that we create here in America? | ||
| If there's a shortage, it only goes to common sense that Yankee ingenuity is going to step up and make that. | ||
| So if we're getting golf balls from China and all of a sudden we can't get golf balls, somebody that's a manufacturer who makes golf balls here in America is going to create jobs and money for America. | ||
| Jack, that's a fantastic question and something I think about all the time. | ||
| I have a few reactions to your really good question. | ||
| One, hit him straight, buddy. | ||
| I am obsessed with golf and I can only hope that you do well today. | ||
| Two, if you're buying Titleists, those are American-made. | ||
| They're made in New Bedford, Massachusetts, right next to one of the best ports in the country in New Bedford. | ||
| I don't know about the other brands where they make their balls, but Titalist has been making in America for a long time. | ||
| And that speaks to your question, I'm not here to, I think you know what brand of ball I play. | ||
| I'm not here to show for any company, but they probably are the best. | ||
| And that is based on American ingenuity, just like you said. | ||
| I have to be very careful saying that we want to self-inflict shortages or price increases in order to bring that business back home. | ||
| There are probably smarter, more gradual, nuanced ways to bring manufacturing back to the United States. | ||
| And we also have to make a decision as policymakers, as a society, what should or needs to be made here versus what textiles, other commodities, maybe foodstuffs are okay to be made abroad. | ||
| So I mentioned certain things like weapon systems or airplanes or chips or yes, certain foodstuffs. | ||
| It's very important for America to retain control over those supply chains. | ||
| But given our labor costs, given competitive advantage, it makes sense for us to trade with other countries that can do it more cheaply or arguably even better than us. | ||
| Also in Ohio, this is an Atwater, Pam on the line for independence. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
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Hey, Kerry. | |
| Just have a question, a couple questions, actually. | ||
| So I don't believe these tariffs were targeted as they could have been. | ||
| And because of that, you're probably going to see small businesses, I would think, go out of business because they don't have the capital to stock up on the merchandise, the material they need to make their product. | ||
| I guess what I'm asking, it sounds like you were in favor of the tariffs in his first term. | ||
| Do you feel these tariffs are maybe not the way they should have been handled? | ||
| Maybe if you had stuck with just China, for example. | ||
| What are your thoughts on that? | ||
| Pam, great question. | ||
| You know, I had an obligation and a sworn duty to work for the policies that the president was advancing in his first term. | ||
| So that's why, while working at the Department of Commerce, I worked in support of tariff policy. | ||
| But to be clear, on net, on net, for American middle-class consumers, just like me and you, and small businesses, tariffs are taxes and tend to have a deleterious or harmful effect on prices and the ability for households and businesses to get the types of things they need. | ||
| I want to be very clear about that. | ||
| That's the position of the seaport industry. | ||
| And frankly, that should be the position of anyone who cares about the middle-class American in the United States. | ||
| You brought up a very important point, and I'm glad you did, about targeted tariffs. | ||
| That is, deciding which specific products or industries are important to either keep out or tax more highly or try to reshore back home. | ||
| And there's a very specific issue that we're facing in the port industry where both President Trump in his first term and President Biden decided, hey, there's a critical piece of equipment that we need to allow to come into the country and not put tariffs on. | ||
| And those are those big, beautiful ship-to-shore cranes that you see dotting the skyline anytime you see a large seaport. | ||
| It's like the iconic thing that you think of when you see a port, the big cranes that are often moving the containers off the ship and onto land or onto a truck or onto a railroad. | ||
| And we haven't made these types of cranes in the United States in 50, 60 years. | ||
| We are working. | ||
| The industry is working with the government to see if we can build them here again. | ||
| But right now, we don't source them anywhere but China and Europe. | ||
| And it's critically important that to prevent inflationary pressures and to make sure that our supply chains are moving the way they should, that we keep using the cranes from trusted suppliers overseas until we can reshore their manufacture here in the United States. | ||
| That's a very specific example of a targeted tariff exemption that we really need to see here in the U.S. Kerry Davis, what's the current state of infrastructure at America's seaports? | ||
| Oh, that's a great question, Mimi. | ||
| Now you've got me started. | ||
| We are in a wonderful time, and all politicians across all parties deserve a pat on the back for the great work that they've done over the last few years in recapitalizing a lot of the aging seaport infrastructure, much of which was built just after World War II. | ||
| We think of Eisenhower-era highways. | ||
| Well, a lot of our seaports were built post-World War II, Eisenhower era as well. | ||
| So with the bipartisan infrastructure law, which was passed by Congress, and with the Inflation Reduction Act, there was a massive, desperately needed infusion of about $20 billion in seaport infrastructure. | ||
| And that includes the dredging and the waterside infrastructure to make sure the navigable waterways are well maintained and are safe, and also the landside infrastructure. | ||
| Many of the things I've been talking about, like the cranes, like the docks, like the pilings, like the piers, like the on-dock rail, like the truck gates, like the mobile harbor cranes, et cetera, like the warehousing, all the sorts of things we've been talking about. | ||
| A great infusion of money into that infrastructure. | ||
| And are those projects underway? | ||
|
unidentified
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Yeah, absolutely. | |
| There are shovels in the ground. | ||
| Frankly, both parties have been working with our industry and with all sorts of others to speed up a lot of the permitting and to cut through a lot of the red tape to get those projects moving faster. | ||
| This is yet another, I'll be honest with you, I don't think this is a particularly sexy issue, permitting reform and cutting red tape, but well, for C-SPAN, it is. | ||
| And everyone across the aisle can get behind it. | ||
| I mean, it was Democratic Senator Joe Manchin who kind of led this effort last time. | ||
| President Trump has been talking about this for years. | ||
| So we're definitely hoping for some really good advancements in this Congress on a bipartisan basis for permitting reform as well. | ||
| But to get to your question directly, shovels are in the ground to expand the capacity at the ports to recapitalize a lot of the aging infrastructure and to make America a trading superpower, just like the way the country was built, the modern country was built. | ||
| All right, that's Kerry Davis, president and CEO of the American Association of Port Authorities. | ||
| You can find them at aapa-ports.org. | ||
| Thanks so much for coming in. | ||
|
unidentified
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It's been a great honor. | |
| Thank you, Mimi. | ||
| C-SPAN's Washington Journal, our live forum involving you to discuss the latest issues in government, politics, and public policy from Washington and across the country. | ||
| Coming up Thursday morning, North Carolina Republican Congressman Pat Harrigan discusses the GOP budget and defense issues. | ||
| Then Texas Democratic Congressman Al Green talks about Democrats' priorities and his vow to bring impeachment articles against President Trump. | ||
| C-SPAN's Washington Journal. | ||
| Join in the conversation live at 7 Eastern Thursday morning on C-SPAN. | ||
| C-SPAN Now, our free mobile app or online at c-SPAN.org. | ||
| I'll look now at what's coming up live on Thursday on the C-SPAN networks. | ||
| First, on C-SPAN, the House is back at 9 a.m. Eastern with members working on legislation to officially rename the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America across all federal agency maps. | ||
| On C-SPAN 2, the Senate returns to session at 10 a.m. Eastern. | ||
| Lawmakers are expected to continue working on legislation to repeal some Biden-era regulations. | ||
| And on C-SPAN 3 at 9 a.m. Eastern, FBI Director Kash Patel will testify before a Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on his agency's 2026 budget request. | ||
| At 10 a.m. Eastern, President Trump will hold a news conference in the Oval Office to announce a trade deal. | ||
| Following that, a commemoration ceremony marking the 80th anniversary of VE or Victory in Europe Day that will be held at the World War II Memorial in Washington, D.C. You can also watch our live coverage of these events on the C-SPAN Now app or online at c-span.org. | ||
| Roman Catholic cardinals from around the world gathered at the Sistine Chapel for the first day of the Papal Conclave in 12 years in an effort to elect a new pope. | ||
| The Cardinals failed to choose a successor to Pope Francis, but will remain sequestered in the Vatican until the new Pope is elected. | ||
| This year, 133 cardinals are eligible to vote in the conclave. | ||
| Many, including 10 Americans, were appointed by Pope Francis. | ||
| It's taking place about two weeks after Francis' death. | ||
| Black smoke billowed from the chapel in the evening, meaning the cardinals did not reach the two-thirds majority needed to elect a new pope. | ||
| The cardinals vote by secret ballot, and at the end of each vote, the ballots are burned in a stove with added color. | ||
| If the smoke is white, a new pope has been chosen. | ||
| There's no timeline for the conclave's decision. | ||
| Pope Francis was chosen in one day in 2013, while the election of Pope Gregory X in 1271 took just under three years. | ||
| The Cardinals will resume voting tomorrow, with two votes in the morning and two in the evening until a consensus is reached. | ||
| C-SPAN will continue to provide coverage from the Vatican for the duration of the conclave and in the aftermath, including the new Pope's traditional address from St. Peter's Square. |