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2 Responses to “Congress Takes ‘Stupid’ Pills Regarding Dubai Ports Deal”

1. Dick Berger says:

   March 5, 2006 at 2:52 PM

   “If the chairman of Zim Lines does not find the boycott grounds for discontinuing his business relationship with DPW, then why should we??”

   Surely there must be many reasons for Zim’s interests to be different from those of the U.S. I think you are very wrong on this issue.

   I wonder if the Knesset would approve DPW’s management of the port of Haifa. I believe we should phase out foreign management of terminals at all US ports as fast as we can find qualified domestic companies to take over. If we can’t find enough private enterprise firms to do it, I would favor their management by the federal government. It is a ridiculous and sorry situation that we have already outsourced about 80% of the terminals at our ports to foreign companies.

   If this trend continues perhaps the only jobs Americans will be doing is flipping hamburgers.

   Reply
2. Richard Silverstein says:

   March 5, 2006 at 4:33 PM

   Dick: I think you fundamentally misunderstand what a terminal operator does (I’ve covered this subject in earlier posts on the ports deal). They unload cargo and they fill out paperwork for that cargo. That’s it. They don’t run security at all. And unloading cargo is increasingly no more than having a guy in a big crane unloading huge containers. How can such a person endanger our security?

   I’ve published several posts here, Dick, explaining that the U.S. maritime industry has been in marked decline since the mid-1950s. There are almost no large marine operators left in this country (there are smaller ones operating out of some ports). This is a high volume, low-profit industry & American companies are looking for larger profits than maritime can offer. That’s why the industry is dominated by foreign players. So it’s an impossible dream to say we should re-create an industry that hasn’t existed for 50 years.

   I disagree that the feds should run this. Don’t we already have enough commercial areas in which the feds have intervened (not always to good effect)?

   The outsourcing argument you mention is tired & irrelevant. The jobs at the DPW U.S. ports will continue to be filled by the same mix of U.S. & other employees as there was before DPW took over. There will be little or no personnel changes since P&O will essentially continue running things. P&O’s entire management structure is being preserved intact in this DPW takeover.

   Reply