Making the most of a supporting role
President Obama's focus on unemployment plays nicely into the hands of ports. Credit: The White House
In this season of Labor Day, job creation and the inchoate 2012 Presidential campaign trail - now an eighteen month affair - ports continue to be a bit player in the larger script.
Voter-touching modes such as highway, rail and aviation clearly get more attention, though President Obama gives lip service to the importance of ports.
As pointed out by the American Association of Port Authorities, Obama has mentioned port investment in the context of infrastructure investment at this time of historically low interest rates. The AAPA, in a letter to a House of Representatives committee looking at such matters, suggests that scarce funds be allocated where they can have the greatest economic impacts. Makes sense to me; this is a time for ports to get the attention they deserve.
The jobs issue, heavily on Obama’s mind with lingering high unemployment, plays nicely in favour of port projects. Some bemoan the “backward” and technologically-lagging nature of the whole maritime business. But, unlike certain service businesses, you can’t just outsource the whole maritime and port business to an offshore centre, like you could for a call centre, for example. So, in this case, if “backward” means “labour intensive” and “bricks and mortar”, that’s a positive thing.
The much touted $50bn Infrastructure Bank, shot down a year ago but back again, has found its way into Obama’s much larger ($450bn) jobs proposal announced shortly after Labor Day. The tricky bit is that, this time, Obama is looking at jump starting it with projects that can be initiated by Executive Branch departments, making an end run around a fractious and likely to gridlock Legislative branch.
It’s important in any proposals that land in front of members of the Executive branch (for example, analysts at the Departments of Transportation, or Commerce), that job counts be mentioned first, and then “economic multipliers”. For example, lead off with: “If we build this access road, xxx workers will be employed for yyy months, starting now, and that’s worth $zzz when multipliers are considered.”
Only after putting the very personal face on it, show them the map, talk about teu. Bring a few out of work laborers along to any meetings where projects are being pitched, in addition to Powerpoint slides. Remember that container boxes do not vote. But the guys building the road from the docks to the Interstate system (which will benefit from all those trucks moving boxes), and their families, do indeed pull the levers or fill in those paper ballots with a soft pencil. Being low tech is sometimes not so bad.
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