Dr. Sal goes to Washington; a conversation with Sal Mercogliano fresh off his Senate hearing appearance

Fresh off the Senate’s Sea Change: Reviving Commercial Shipbuilding hearing this week, Dr. Sal Mercogliano joins us to share everything he didn’t get to say on the record. We unpack his “Ships for America” warning, his proposal for a Maritime Reserves program, and what he hopes to see in the upcoming Maritime Action Plan due November 5. Then we turn to China’s unexpected restraint and what the one-year pause on Section 301 port fees really signals for global shipping strategy.

⚓ Expanded Summary

When a congressional hearing earns praise instead of eye-rolls, you know something’s changing. The Senate’s Sea Change: Reviving Commercial Shipbuilding brought together voices from across the industry — Matt Paxton (Shipbuilders Council of America), Jeff Vogel (TOTE Services), Tuuli Snow (Snow & Company), and Dr. Sal Mercogliano (Campbell University) — for one of the most substantive maritime policy discussions in years.

In this episode, we talk to Dr. Sal Mercogliano fresh off the hearing to capture everything that didn’t fit into his five-minute testimony. He expands on his call for a Maritime Reserves program — a proposal Senator Cantwell immediately engaged on — and explains why rebuilding America’s maritime strength means focusing on both ships and sailors. We also dive into his “Ships for America” warning, the lessons of the 1920 and 1936 Maritime Acts, and why the timing of the Maritime Action Plan could mark the start of a genuine U.S. maritime strategy revival.

Highlights from the hearing:
🔹 How Sal’s “Ships for America” message reframed U.S. industrial strategy
🔹 His proposal for a Maritime Reserves program — and how Sen. Cantwell immediately engaged on it
🔹 Why bipartisan momentum is building around the upcoming Maritime Action Plan (due Nov 5)
🔹 And what all this means for shipbuilders, mariners, and shippers watching U.S.–China trade signals after the temporary pause on Section 301 port fees

We also zoom out to the global picture — where a tentative U.S.–China deal has paused both U.S. and mirrored Chinese port fees for one year. Instead of escalating, Beijing matched Washington’s structure and quietly absorbed the costs through COSCO and OOCL. The result? Stability over spectacle — and a sign that both sides are managing leverage, not launching a trade war.

If you’ve been waiting for proof that Washington is serious about maritime again — this is the episode.

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Chapters

• 0:00 A Productive Senate Hearing
• 1:35 Guest Introduction: Dr. Sal
• 3:38 Australia Port Lessons And Security
• 7:07 First Senate Testimony Setup
• 10:15 Why Commercial Shipbuilding Matters
• 14:10 History, Jones Act, And Capacity
• 19:40 China’s Vertical Maritime Strategy
• 24:05 Incentives Over Subsidies
• 28:50 Tariffs, Allies, And SHIPS Act Risks
• 34:25 Workforce And Veteran Status Ideas
• 39:20 Education And Early Outreach
• 44:18 Leadership And National Strategy
• 49:02 Tote VCM And Procurement Reform
• 53:05 Beyond Philly: Yard Capacity Needs
• 57:20 Offshore Wind, OSVs, And Dual-Use
• 1:02:35 Licenses, Reserves, And Retention
• 1:07:40 State Strategies And Port Roles
• 1:12:10 Senate Momentum, House Hurdles
• 1:16:30 Closing Takeaways And Next Steps

Transcript

SPEAKER_01: 0:01

Ready to go.

SPEAKER_02: 0:10

You're listening to By Land and By Sea, powered by the Maritime Professor. Washington turned its attention to Maritime. And guys, the conversation was focused, it was serious, and it was productive. Look, these words are not often used to describe congressional hearings. The Senate held a hearing in one of its subcommittees that wasn't just symbolic, but it was substantive. And it focused on rebuilding America's commercial shipbuilding base and maritime strength. It was called Sea Change, Reviving Commercial Shipbuilding, and it carried a clear message we've done this before, and we can do it again. Maybe better this time. Hi, welcome back to My Land and by C, an attorney breaking down the weekend supply chain, presented by me, the Maritime Professor. I'm Lauren Vegan, the founder of the Maritime Professor, former FMC International Affairs Attorney, and founder of Call Strategies. My land and by C is your go-to resource for navigating the regulatory side of global issues shipping. And me, I'm your favorite maritime attorney. As always, this podcast is for educational purposes only and should not be considered legal advice. You need an attorney, contact an attorney. This is plain language maritime, created so that anyone, not just lawyers or industry insiders, can understand what's happening in the world of shipping. So let's dive into this week's episode because as you know, ocean shipping moves the world. Well, this week we're spotlighting one of the most productive and forward-looking hearings we've seen in years the Senate sea change reviving commercial shipbuilding. It wasn't just about politics or posturing, it was about solutions. This panel brought together voices from across the maritime industry. We had Matt Paxton, president of the Shipbuilders Council of America. We had Jeff Vogel, vice president of Legal at Toast Services. We had Tully Snow, talent acquisition and engagement manager at Snow and Company. And we had Dr. Sal Mercagliano, a friend of the show, professor at Campbell University, former merchant mariner, adjunctor at King's Point, and host of what's going on with shipping. Sal's testimony stood out for the way he connected history, policy, and strategy, reminding everyone, all the senators, but everybody watching, just how central maritime is to American power overall. He also introduced the idea of maritime reserves program, a concept that Senator Cantwell immediately picked up on during the hearing and urged Congress to think creatively about incentives for rebuilding both ships and mariners together, and especially that maritime reserves program idea. I caught up with Sal right after the hearing to unpack his remarks from Ships for America warning and that maritime reserves proposal to what he hopes to see in the maritime action plan due out November 5th or thereabouts. So let's go to that conversation now. I'm so excited to have back on the show one of my favorite people to talk maritime with, and honestly, one of our most popular returning guests, Dr. Sal Mercogliano. Thanks for coming back, Sal.

SPEAKER_01: 3:11

Thank you, Professor Began. I appreciate the invite.

SPEAKER_02: 3:13

Well, so great to have a fellow professor, writer professor at Campbell University, an adjunct professor at King's Point, which is fantastic, a maritime historian, a former merchant mariner, and the voice behind the wildly popular What's Going On with Shipping YouTube channel. And he's also a great friend of the show. So always happy to have you back.

SPEAKER_01: 3:32

Thanks, Lauren. I you know I'm always excited to talk about anything with you. So this is gonna be fun.

SPEAKER_02: 3:37

It is, yeah. Well, you had quite the week. What a week you've had. What a few weeks you've had, right? You were in Australia. We saw you all over on LinkedIn in Australia and Western Australia, not just like Eastern Australia where most people go. You went out to Perth and then uh yeah, you floated around over there. But this week, well, actually, yeah, let's stop there. Let's let's hear a little bit about your Australian adventures for a minute.

SPEAKER_00: 3:59

Yeah, I got invited out by uh Pabar Ports, who operate the ports on the far northwestern coast of Australia. So I was invited to a conference I hosted called the Safe Port Safe Ship Forum. And uh Tuesday, Wednesday last week, I gave the keynote on Wednesday morning, but I attended the whole conference. It was great. It was really interesting to hear a lot of what's going on in these ports. Uh there's a lot of focus on obviously net zero and framework and uh involved. But what's really interesting is they're developing a hydrogen, uh hydrogen, but an ammonia kind of kind of kind of green lane there between Port Headland and Asia. So it's gonna be really interesting to see how that develops. And I actually went on Thursday, I flew up with the CEO of the company to Port Headland, a place nobody knows about. It's on the far northwestern side. It's like landing on Mars, Lauren. It's like it's like number one, it's like 100 degrees. Everything is like red, it's covered in iron ore. And I have never I've sailed and been to many ports. I've never seen anything like this. There were a dozen and a half bulk carriers there. I'm talking everything from handy-sized to cape size vessels loading iron ore, coal, and lithium. This port, just this single port of Port Headland, loads 778 million tons a year of cargo out of it. That's five percent of global total tonnage. It was absolutely incredible. And what's interesting is that there's there were about 18 ships in port when I was there. There were 40 ships out at anchorage waiting to come in, and the whole system is geared to get ships in and out efficiency through a like a three-hour-long channel. It was amazing. They have 27 tugs, a dozen pilots. It is a amazing move. They they talk about the fact that for every hour they lose business or something happens to them, they lose$5 million. So it was absolutely fascinating to get a look at a port that does that volume of business that efficiently. And the focus is the port, not the ships. It's very funny talking to the CEO saying that our goal here is to make sure that the port stays open. And it really hammered home for me something in the United States that we don't take a lot of concern about, and that is our port security and our port safety. You would think after the motor vessel Dolly, after everything we've seen with the with how vulnerable our ports are to closures, this issue was was was absolutely paramount there when I was in Western Australia.

SPEAKER_02: 6:37

That's great. And what a great way to highlight this area, too. I mean, you know, it previously were not a place people go for tourism, it sounds like. And and right going north means you're going warmer because they're in the southern hemisphere. But that's incredible. I didn't realize that they did all of the that that well, it's bulk commodity right out of out of there.

SPEAKER_00: 6:56

So yeah, that's it. It it's the biggest port you never heard of. And and it's just it's just absolutely incredible. And I'm pretty sure it's on the equator. It was pretty hot when it went there. So it was warm.

SPEAKER_02: 7:07

Yeah. Well, then you quickly came back to the uh the chilly mid-Atlantic Northeast. And yeah, you you testified before the Senate Subcommittee on Coast Guard, Maritime and Fisheries this week. Your first, if I'm if I'm correct, Senate hearing, right?

SPEAKER_01: 7:20

No, you are absolutely correct.

SPEAKER_00: 7:22

So this is the first time I've ever gone before Congress, let alone the the Senate uh committee on uh on commerce there. So yeah, that was that was a bit of a whirlwind. I got contacted by Senator Sullivan's office. Senator Sullivan is the is the right is the is the chairman of the committee, subcommittee, excuse me. And his staff contacted me. I thought they were contacting me about questions they wanted to ask, and and then about halfway through our conversation, it became very clear that it was something different. And then they asked me about going and testifying. And of the date they gave me was when I was in Australia, so I couldn't do it, but they wound up actually moving the the the date. So yeah, on Tuesday this week, I flew up and and testified. So that that was an amazing event.

SPEAKER_02: 8:02

That's incredible. And and like you said, right? So the subcommittee is chaired by Senator Dan Sullivan of Alaska. And honestly, you know, watching that hearing, there there was a lot of focus on on certainly shipbuilding and and that side of things. But the the title itself was Sea Change Reviving Commercial Shipbuilding. And that's something that I have to talk about on this show, and I think you do on your show as well, where we're talking so much about military shipbuilding. We have to focus on the commercial shipbuilding side too, because that's where the longevity comes in. That's where we really need the kind of market-driven inertia that that comes from making sure that we're focused on the commercial side. And it really felt this hearing, kind of my reaction to it, was this is probably one of the most actually technically substantive maritime hearings in years, perhaps. It really got down to the nuts and bolts of how to fix things. And you know, the timing is important. We've had a lot of maritime inertia this year with the executive order on restoring America's maritime dominance, the proposed Ships for America Act, and then we're we're anticipating, right? November 5th is the date for the maritime action plan, sometime in early November is what I keep hearing. But let's take kind of before we dive into all the specifics, why was this particular hearing? Why did it feel different? What made the lawmakers actually really understand it? I felt like their questions were very educated and targeted and they understand what was happening. And then you provided such great context to helping them further understand so that they can make better legislative decisions.

SPEAKER_00: 9:35

I have to agree 100% with you, Lauren. It was you and me watch these hearings all the time. And and and one of the things that always strikes me, especially when we talk about anything shipping right now, is how bipartisan it is. This is not a judiciary hearing, it's not armed services, it's it's nothing like that. This is there was a little brief of issue at the very beginning there because of the closure of the government, but basically we got right into it. And and it is amazing how educated the staffs and the senators are on this topic. I was I was very impressed by that. I was on the committee with uh Matt Paxton, who is the head of the shipbuilding council of America, uh Jeff Vogel, vice president for Tote, Talise Snow, who's whose family runs a shipyard in in Seattle, I believe it is Seattle Tacoma area. And then there was me, which I said, okay, I'm not exactly sure why I am on this committee because it's I I'm like the one person who's kind of outside of it. But one of the things that Sullivan's staff talked to me about is like, we really need context. We really need, and that's I got a lot of those questions was how do we get here? How what what happened? Because you know, the knee-jerk reaction is it's the Jones Act. It's you know, and it's like, okay, it's not. There's a lot of subset here. And one of the big things I pointed on throughout the hearing was we made that decision. We we focused, we wanted to focus on naval shipbuilding at the expense of commercial shipbuilding. And what we found out is that's detrimental, not just to commercial shipbuilding, but actually to Navy shipbuilding, because we don't have that depth of workforce that we once had. And I think that was a big thing we kept talking about throughout the hearing was was it really is complimentary. It's not it's not competition because you will hear that from some of the shipyards, General Dynamics, Huntington Ingalls, who are the big Navy contractors, are very concerned about this because they make the argument that if we build up commercial shipbuilding, that'll be at the expense of Navy shipbuilding. Because listen, there's a finite workforce out there, and that's going to be a problem. And I I fundamentally disagree with that. I really do. It's like if there is a larger workforce, then the workforce can better absorb the shocks that hit it, especially from the military side, where contracts are peaking and troughing all the time. And so what I try to do is really lay out, I really tried to emphasize a couple of key things in my opening statement. Number one, that this is the first substantial maritime legislation we've had in 55 years. Yes, we had the Ocean Shipping Reform Act, which dealt with international trade, but in terms of really domestic maritime reform, you've got to go back to 1970. And even that, that was kind of a flawed Merchant Marine Act. And then we talked about the historical nature of how did we get the big shipbuilding processes in the past? You know, how did Edward Hurley do it in World War I? How did Emory Land do it in World War II? And, you know, I got those questions about do we require massive subsidies? What do we require to make this thing work? And I was, I was very shocked as many questions as I got, because I assumed everybody else would be getting the questions. You know, why go to the professor from the small private college in North Carolina? But I I did get a fair share of the questions.

SPEAKER_02: 12:34

Well, and you did such a great job of really providing that context, like you said. But of course they went to you because that's where they needed to find out well, where did we go wrong? What changed? And then therefore, how can we how can we course correct? Or how can we course correct to a better course, even? And I think that that was something that you did really well. And I also think, you know, you you took them through some of that Jones Act of 1920 and Merchant Marine Act of 1936, and you know, both times the US coming off economic crisis and using the policy to help rebuild the industrial capacity and jobs. And I think that was something that a few weeks ago when we had the nomination hearings for both the Maritime Administrator Steve Carmel and then the two FMC nominees, Lord Bella and Bob Harvey, one thing that Steve really talked about was, you know, we used to be able to uplift if needed. And he wasn't so certain that tomorrow we could do the same thing, today or tomorrow. And that that's part of the severe urgency. And it's it feels like it's almost just glossed over, severe urgency, but like it truly is such a maritime national security thing that if we can't uplift and if we can't get to even a place where we can quickly make a lot of military vessels because we already have commercial shipbuilding vessel capacity, that's a problem for us as a country. So you you provided a lot of of context of 1920 and 1936, but maybe for the listeners, so that everybody's up to speed, a little bit of uh what you shared during that hearing.

SPEAKER_00: 14:03

Yeah, so I mean, my opening statement is I really gave that kind of very quick five minutes, man, five minutes goes by very quick when you're doing one of those things. But you know, I gave that kind of synopsis. And one of the things I talked about in particular was listen, uh, World War I, one of the things we found out was, you know, we only hauled about 11% of our imports and exports. And when World War I happened and all of a sudden we, you know, shipping disappeared, man, we suffered a massive economic recession. It was it was a big problem. And out of it became the Merchant Marine Act 1920, the Jones Act, which is more than cabotage. It's section 27 of 32 sections. So there's 31 other sections. What do they deal with? And they created a really a comprehensive national maritime strategy or plan that was executed for almost 40 years. I mean, that was really the system we had. You build on it in 36 with the act, and and you you start building ships, you start, you know, you have the idea of differentials for both construction and operation. At the same time, the government kicks off a building program to kind of, you know, uh kind of uh prime the pump, so to speak, to get shipbuilding. And I made the point that the 36 Act put in place the shipyards and the shipworkers in place so that you could build the two ocean navy acts of 38 and 1940. And and you know, I basically said, listen, we did this twice in the 20th century. The problem with doing it twice in the 20th century is for the 20 years after that, we had built enough ships that we didn't have to build any ships. And and what where we faltered was in the 1960s, 1970s, and we didn't really adjust to keep up. And then plus, the system we created was designed to really flood the marketplace with commercial shipping, but not American, but foreign shipping. We i I mean, we could have sat there and been, you know, the Roman Empire of shipping if we wanted to, but we didn't. We we we repopulated the world's fleets, we helped build rebuild their shipyards, and for the better of the world, we created a global economic system that hauled, you know, from half a billion tons of cargo in 1950 to 12 billion tons today, which is fantastic, but to the detriment of our own shipping industry, we outsourced out that commercial shipping. And one of the things I started talking about is is also the threat of the Chinese. It's the Chinese are a unique problem. It's they're not the British Empire. The British Empire was much different. The Chinese are trying not just to control shipping, but they're trying to control all aspects of shipping. It's very much econ 101 vertical integration. You know, every every aspect from the shipbuilding, ship operations, ports, container leasing, uh uh uh chassis, you name it, even the mariners, they're controlling all aspects about that. And and that means that we are vulnerable to shocks to the system because the Chinese can better absorb them than we can. And that was what I was trying to highlight to what why this is such a security issue. It's not just a matter of having American flags on ships.

SPEAKER_02: 16:51

Well, and I think that's so right. And actually, you know, that speaking of kind of current events that are happening right now, here we are recording on Thursday. This will run tomorrow on Friday, where in the midst of China trade deals just hours ago, where we heard that there's a pause on the China port fees. And that's part of it. I mean, they had tens of millions of dollars of hits in just the first two weeks that this USDR Section 301 port fee was assessed, and it was mostly hitting Costco and OCL. And instead of, I was hearing that most shippers weren't feeling a thing that all of these ocean carriers said that they weren't going to pass it through, hadn't been passing it through over the past two weeks. And so in turn, China, because they control, you know, all of the operations of everything of their vessels, were just kind of eating these charges. So to me, it also certainly signals I think we're getting a trade deal out of this because they don't want to continue to eat, because I think their projections were like$1.4 billion a year that they might just have to continue to eat these fees should it continue the way it was and not being passed through. So I mean, uh one example of ways that they can kind of absorb changes to the industry. But yeah, I think I think that this is uh an important thing. I was expecting to see, and we'll see what ultimately comes out in the you know printed document. I was expecting to see a little bit more on shipbuilding. I thought that the signal of having the conversation in Korea might signal that maybe I don't even know, maybe there might be a commitment out of China to buy US built vessels, right? Like I was kind of thinking that might be the cherry on top of a full trade deal. Do you think that we'll ever get to that point, perhaps?

SPEAKER_00: 18:29

I I think a couple of things, Lauren, right off the bat. I mean, you you made me think about a couple of things that we talked about in the committee that kind of relates to that. Number one, one of the things, Senator Young, who's the co-author of the uh of the Ships Act with Senator Kelly, Kelly was actually in there. He wasn't on the committee, but he was actually in the hearing room. Matter of fact, he came in to talk to us before we went out. He was very gracious with his time. But uh Young was very much talking about what does it mean to have commercial shipping? And I talked about the idea that this is economic soft power. This is this is this is part, it's not just naval power that you exercise to be a true, you know, Maanian maritime power, you need the commercial side. And that's what China has learned. I made the argument that China has swallowed Mahan, and they understand this entirely. And and that's what China has learned too. You know, we we worried, you know, I got the question about how can China impact us? Well, we've impacted China quite a bit with the tariffs. I mean, I don't think we really quite understand the impact that the port fees and tariffs have had on China. We've realized, okay, we can actually wield this against China, and so we can be sure about that. So I do think there's a lot at play here. You know, one of the stats I had, and I talked about this, if you look at the last two years, China has grown in terms of market share of ship orders from about 50, but from about, I forget what it is, but it's about a 16% growth. That's the exact number, by the way, Japan and Korea has decreased. And so, you know, in many ways, I was very concerned about this being a Ships for Korea Act, not a Ships for America Act, because Korea and Japan have have a vested interest in this. But I do think it's an alliance issue. I think it's a very good alliance issue to build this kind of agreement on. And I think China recognizes that. I think China recognizes that, you know, they they may have been pushing too hard and now have caused a backlash in Japan and Korea against their shipbuilding programs. Because that you're seeing this, you're seeing that investment from Hanwa over in the United States. We've got Hyundai coming in, we've got the Japanese now talking about it, something they had not been talking about. I think I think one of the things this week that's kind of under the radar was the former Japanese prime minister was not really much interested in this, but I think the new Japanese prime minister is. And, you know, if Trump had Abe there, I think he would have been full force in this. But now this new prime minister seems to be more interested in that. And I think the the prospect of a US-Japan-Korea shipbuilding tri, you know, trifecta, whatever you want to call this, is a bit of a concern for China. And I think that's one of the reasons we saw the the lessening on the port fees right now, and perhaps China willing to back off a little bit. And they have been hurt. We've seen numbers coming out of China that orders are down, but at the same time, they're still the behemoth. I mean, they're not going anywhere.

SPEAKER_02: 21:07

That's right. Well, and I think that's true too. I mean, once you start to look at some of the intellectual property, you know, conversions or requirements that China had, and you know, just to do business, there were some things that made other countries uncomfortable that I think that is, I think you're you're spot on why people were so quick to, if given a reason, to perhaps turn away from China as their option for vessel purchases and start looking for the other options. And so I think I think that that is how I see things going too, this trifecta, and and maybe even larger than that, right? I think Europeans are gonna start looking at, you know, potentially we we have icebreaker orders out of Finland right now from the US Coast Guard and just US generally. But also I think that maybe more partnerships are gonna be forged there as well. So we'll we'll see how all of that that shakes out. You know, one thing that I always want to mention when we start talking about the Jones Act, I think that your intro remarks talking about perhaps a not a repeal, but a revisit, a kind of an update. It was a good point. But also other countries have cabotage, other, which means other countries have preference for their own flag. And I think that that sometimes gets missed in the larger conversation, that this isn't just a US protectionism idea. This is kind of thing as something that other countries have have thought as a good idea too. And so the problem, part of the problem was it didn't, even though we had this law, we didn't really have all of the support. And one of the other things too that you certainly brought up was we need to have those economic drivers for the cargo to help fuel and fill those cargo vessels. And so it's not just US flag and that's it alone. We have to have that economic engine that keeps it going because otherwise we will find ourselves in this same realm in 30, 40, maybe even sooner years if we don't have an industry that can just keep itself going. Subsidies are only going to last so long. And once that money dries up, which is kind of what happened, you know, in this respect and why we are where we are now. If we can have the economic engine take over, we don't have to subsidize as much, maybe at all. I you know, I don't necessarily want to go all that way, but we certainly there there's some economic drivers that happen there. So speak to that a little bit. And you had brought up some incentives for shippers.

SPEAKER_00: 23:17

I I did. You know, it's very interesting that you know my Australia trip actually coincided very nice with this. Because I gotta tell you, when I was in Australia and New Zealand, one of the things they talked about is really losing their national fleet and being at the really at the mercy of some foreign shipping companies here. Because one of the things Australia is taught is trying to revive is this kind of national shipping line to provide a linkage service between all their cities because their internal transportation is not great. I mean, their rail isn't the best, the road is very difficult, you know, to move around a continent for a population of 30 million. New Zealand being at the tail end of a supply chain line is always at the mercy of a supply uh of a company that may want to cancel service because it's not being profitable enough for them. And so I mean, we definitely see that happening. For the United States, you know, you know, Senator Cruz, when he gave me his question, was it was a huge question. And I looked at that question as being a very elaborate question that kind of delved into this quite a bit. You know, he asked me basically, you know, how do we do this without massive subsidies? You know, we don't want to do what the 1928 act did, which just is throw money at it because that's going to open up the the potential for waste and abuse. And I agreed with him. I told him, you know, one of the stats I came in with is the US Americans are the you know fourth largest owners of ships in the world. But our merchant marine is number 23, which means that we don't mind owning ships. We just don't want to own American ships, which means we're fine to invest in shipping. And what we have to do, and I told the senator this, is we need to adapt some of those methods outside that will make money from the United States want to go into American shipping and not foreign shipping. So uh, you know, a lot of that's in the Ships Act. You know, we've got the 25% tax reduction for for investment. We've got Title XI, we have uh a whole batch of methods that we're trying to do that. I added a few more in there. I talked about the ideas like listen, if you haul an American ship, you get a tax incentive. You get you get basically, you know, if I'm a shipper and I'm hauling on an American good, I should be able to take right that off of my taxes. Hey, if I'm importing from overseas, maybe my tariffs don't apply. You know, maybe I come in tariff-free. I mean, if all of a sudden you come in tariff-free, that may generate a lot of cargo going on ships. I think we got to, again, look outside the box. We have to open up shipping in the United States. I'd love to do liquefied natural gas movement around the United States. It's going to take five years to build an LNG carry in the United States. I mean, we're not talking about seeing a ship till 2030. So this is where my Jones Act thing comes in. Maybe we need to waive aspects of it to bring foreign-built-in ships in for a temporary period to do that. I know I made a couple of people behind me in that audience probably cringe and not like that idea. And I made others kind of cheer about it, but you know, you know as well as I do the Jones Act and US shipping, you're bipolar on this. Either you're 100% for it or you're 100% against it. I I don't represent anybody but myself. And I could sit there and say, listen, it's a law, it made sense in 1920. And one of the things we failed to do since, you know, for 105 years is really keep our laws and regulations updated. And you know that better than I do over at the FMC and everything we've done with that. We tend to be, I don't I want to say 10 years behind, but I think we're about 20, 30 years behind at times. So we just need to have that conversation. And and I can have that conversation. I think I think it's one of the reasons I was on this on this hearing, is because I'm a tenured professor. I can I can't be fired. So I'm good to go.

SPEAKER_02: 26:34

You're a free agent, you're good. That's right. Well, you know, it's it's so interesting. The 1920 Merchant Marine Act, so that also had some FMC application to it that I think it's often forgotten and has often been used with such a light touch. But we have the Foreign Shipping Practices Act, which pairs with section 19 of the Merchant Marine Act, which gives the FMC authority to do things like looking at flags of convenience and the unfair, unreasonable practices that might be associated with that. Or more importantly, and I think more of a leverage right now, is this maritime choke points investigation that's still ongoing. They collected all the comments, but they were looking at seven maritime choke points around the world, one being the Northern Sea route, that I think is a really interesting in the last week thing that probably will come to the FMC's attention, you know, with China in the news. China and Russia have announced that they will be working together in the Northern Sea route, which the FMC identified that that was a maritime choke point they were looking at because they wanted to see whether some unfair practices, did you have to hire a certain ice-breaking company? Were the rates fair, not fair, right? Was there subjectiveness or true objectiveness in the area? I mean, it's almost wild to go this far, but if China there's not a lot of Russian flags, right? So the recourse that the FMC can take is they can either, as it relates to US trade, right? The vessels have to have some sort of a nexus to the US or FMC authorities to really take hold. We don't have a lot of Russian vessels. If China can somehow get looped into that maritime choke point of the Northern Sea route and being part of the conversation of unfair or unfavorable shipping conditions for the otherwise free and flow, free flow and efficient movement of goods, I mean the FMC as recourse could turn away Chinese flagged vessels. I mean, talk about a hammer that now the US has to continue the conference. They didn't even need that for this trade conversation.

SPEAKER_00: 28:30

No, and and I I think, you know, my hearing, and as you said, the confirmations last week were really interesting. Laura DeBello and Robert Harvey up there for the FMC. I mean, we're going to see some aspects from the FMC. The FMC have been unleashed, though, largely. And I that you and I have talked about this in the past. They've got a new kind of wind behind their sail, so to speak. And the choke points one is very interesting. One of the things that Senator Sullivan, for example, talked about uh very briefly in my hearing was the idea of re-establishing ADAC as a Navy base. That's in the Aleutian Islands. And that's a really interesting. I was always has I always kind of criticized the closing of that ADAC naval base because number one, it's astride this Trans-Pacific route because great circle, the world's not flat, you know, right the shortest distance between China and the US goes right past the Aleutian Islands. And then ADAC is right there at that choke point coming out of the Bering Sea. And so there is a lot of aspects going on here. And what we've seen now is is non-ICE strengthened ships going through that route. We're seeing that last year was the biggest tonnage going through that route. This is definitely something, especially as you start creating this sanctioned fleet, this dark fleet, shadow fleet. The Russians are going to bypass port state controls and all these issues. They can go directly, you don't have to worry about going through waters, confined, straight waters of European nations. They can just go directly to China and do this route. And I don't buy the shipping line sitting there saying we're not going to go there because of emissions issues. Shipping companies will go wherever they want to go if the profits are there. And That's something that we learned very quickly. So again, this goes to that soft power application that I think is really important about having commercial shipbuilding and commercial merch marine in the United States. We're seeing that with the Russians right now, how they're using it. The Russian merch marine is about the size of the US, but they're using it a lot more efficiently and directed than the US is using its merch marine.

SPEAKER_02: 30:20

Yeah, and I think that's right too. And you know, to kind of go back to the tax incentive, right? The commercial shipping side of things, that was, as I under, as I saw, it was in part of the drafts of some of those ships acts, the drafts before it was actually introduced. And, you know, the the word that I was hearing was that shippers were thrilled with the idea of whether it was exporting and you get a tax incentive or tax rate for exporting on US vessels, or for the importers, whether it was ad valorum based on the value of the goods or it was weight. I mean, we have some really important imports that are coming in, meat being one of those, where if there weren't tariffs, particularly on Brazil, right? That that's a big country that we import meat from for the lien cuts that are important to the overall making of a hamburger, which is a bit about American as cherry pie, right? But but had there been an incentive to move on a US flag vessel, I think we would actually probably have too much imports coming in on our demand that you might see the rates skyrocket just because you have too many people trying to quickly move over to US flags. So perhaps that's why I pulled back. But I think that maybe having the same way that the US port, the Section 301 port fees, a graduated once we get the capacity there, once we get the vessels there, to continue to push shippers through incentives, not penalties, but incentives to choose. Because what we definitely saw pre-COVID was, you know, freight rates ruled the day. What we're seeing post-COVID is that it's more about the experience, it's more about the control. We're seeing so much more diversify diversification of ports of entry, supply chain methods. Everybody wants to have a little bit more of an understanding of what it looked like. Where previous to COVID, it was like, all right, good. It's my my my stuff showed up at the port. Let me figure out the inland transport now. Now it's total system that people understand the ocean side.

SPEAKER_00: 32:09

Oh, it it is reliability. It is everything. I mean, we keep talking about that all the time. You know, the classic supply chain issue we saw was pre-COVID pre-supply chain, you know, we were paying, you know, low fees for great reliability. You know, the cargo was arriving in the port we wanted, which was LA and Long Beach, without a problem. And then COVID hit and you're paying a huge amount of fees, but low reliability, it's not coming in. And what we saw is shippers change. They they realized, like, why am I going into the LA Long Beach complex? It's giving me nothing but headaches because it's it it's we're we're jamming the system so much that the inland transportation system is where we're seeing the fault happen. And we fixed a lot of that. I mean, there's a lot of issues that got fixed. Warehouse management is much better than it was. But one of the things we saw is a much more diverse ability to transport into the system. And I think that is uh exactly key. And one of the reasons I wanted to bring that up was because, again, we're in the markup phase now for this bill, and it's it we can bring that back in. And I know there was hesitation about entering it beforehand, that we didn't want to get into it. But I think the incentives is a real key thing. Because let's be clear, if we if we flax the port fees, for example, that was the money that was going to be put into this maritime trust fund that was going to help finance the shipbuilding. And if all of a sudden port fees are gonna be down, we're not gonna be collecting that you know,$3 billion in port fees, then we got a problem because then we've got to come up with some other solution to do it. And I'm not a big one who likes the taxes, but incentives to me are really good. If we want to do that, because it because when I talked about, for example, increasing the maritime security program, this is the fleet of 60 ships that does receive a subsidy to basically flag into the U.S. registry and carry. We've got 60 cargo ships, 10 tankers that are doing that. But understand, even that subsidy is not enough to make them economically viable. They need cargo. And one of the things that we've seen is U.S. cargo has reduced it under this administration. There's not as much U.S. cargo, either military or aid cargo going out. And you know, one of the comments I got before I did my testimony is like, hey, we know you're gonna advocate for this, but we don't want, we really don't want to see an expansion of the MSP fleet because we're fighting for cargo right now. Something I didn't really get a chance to talk about a little bit more in detail in the in the hearing, I would have loved to do. But I noted in my here in my opening, listen, this has got to be concurrent with cargo. And I don't want to go crazy with cargo because Steve Carmel had done that the previous week. But what I said is listen, you this has got to be concurrent, it's got to be part of an overall strategy, and so we need to raise the number of cargo and to meet incentives is the way to do that. Hey, I I want I want to go on an American ship because it gets me, it gets me priority going into U.S. ports. I'm losing, I'm not gonna pay a tariff uh coming in or a much lower tariff if I'm coming in. So therefore, I want to be able to do that. And to me, that seems to be a great solution. You get the added protection and benefits of being U.S. registry over Marshall Islands, Liberia, and Panama, which is which again, how do we make that happen? And I th I thought I laid out a couple of ideas for them to think about.

SPEAKER_02: 35:08

Yeah, and I think that that's so important too. I, you know, going back to thinking about the Ships Act a little bit more, I think that you made such a strong point saying, let's not make the Ships for Korea Act, let's make this the Ships for America Act, but but not in a way that's disparaging to our allies and partners there. But it was really kind of that warning against outsourcing the entire industrial base again so that we might be back here, right? So let's find ways of partnering with our allies, but then continuing on. There's some other pieces of the SHIPS Act that I think are really important that, you know, even within it, it talks about workforce development, it talks about technology advancements, it talks about, you know, the the US Center for Maritime Innovation, it talks about some really exciting new initiatives that are moving forward that also perhaps will find its way into the maritime action plan and have kind of more of a house for an overall national maritime strategy. One thing that that I have heard floated around is even with our mariners, perhaps recategorizing them because they kind of fall into this are they military, are they not, right? And perhaps even having, and and I don't know how you feel about this, I'm kind of springing this on you now, but even a veterans' preference for, you know, mariners in in the field. Once they they, especially if they served in any sort of capacity that was in a combat zone, right? We're seeing that even nowadays where they're not getting a lot of credit for being in the Red Sea and getting fired upon, right? I mean, there's certainly things that the the recognition of the dangers that go along with it that need to be recognized. But also, how do you get more people into the maritime industry and want to be part of it? And I think having it be a cool new thing, it's always going to have a sense of adventure to it, right? That's gonna always be the innate draw. But but having a how do we get it to be something that boats are still cool when you're in kindergarten, somewhere along the line, they become maybe less cool. How do we keep it there?

SPEAKER_00: 37:06

No, I I think that's first of all, I I love the idea of veterans status for mariners. I've talked about this for a long time. I've roped John Conrad into this. I I talk about this a lot. I I laugh about the fact that my wife and I were on a ship together in the Persian Gulf War, and you know, she was in the Navy. I was uh sailing for military sea lift command as a civilian, and you know, she got six medals and she got the GI bill and she got all these advantages. I got to pay$35 to get a medal, and and then you know, it was sent to me by Merit. And that was it. That's that's basically what I got a medal? I had to pay for it. Yeah, I didn't order it, but I yeah, I eventually got one. But but no, I I I do I do think, you know, one of the things we want to do is how do we incentivize shipping for our mariners? And you know, tax-free status, you know, you know, if you sell you know more than 180 days on your license, for example, in a year, and I don't care if it's international or domestic, it creates mobility, you don't have to pay federal income tax, or it gets waived, or it's a write-off for you. Now all of a sudden, you know, you're making money akin to what somebody is making in Silicon Valley or something like that. That's incentive. That helps you pay off your college, it does all these things, it will bring people in. And I think that's one of the elements because what we tend to forget is is that these mariners are doing something very unique in terms of not just commercially moving goods, but for the national security. Uh uh Senator uh Tammy Bowen from Wisconsin was talking about the Great Lakes. I didn't get a chance to answer a question for her because she didn't really address it to me. But you know, we just had a new ship built up on the Great Lakes. Why are we not building up on the Great Lakes? Why is there not a fund to replace the Great Lakes fleet, which is age? We're coming up on the 50th anniversary of the Edmund Fitzgerald sinking. You know, why are we not having a program up there to replace all the Lakers up there? You know, that brings work into Wisconsin where uh FinCantier is that's going to build the Navy frigates. That, you know, will create a workforce up in the lakes region that is absolutely essential. And we should be building it. When you build one ship in 40 years, that's a work of art. It's not a ship. It's a one-of-a-kind thing. It's it's you need to build 20 of them to make this efficient. And so we should be doing that. I talked about in my opening statement is like, hey, we need to be replacing the fleet of tugboats, towboats, and ferries in the United States. One of the reasons I talked about that is because if you build an ocean-going ship, it's three to five years till you see it. I can build a tugboat tomorrow. I get a tugboat built in a year. That's going to start, you know, getting the welders, the electricians, the ship fitters, the uh the uh engineers going on a smaller basis and they can start working in small yards, building those state-of-the-art tugs that I just saw in Australia at a port, which were just phenomenal, that we should have in every port in the United States providing escorts for ships coming in and out so we don't have an incident like the Dolly happen again that shuts an American port down for two months. Imagine if that happened in Houston or New York or Savannah or LA and Long Beach. It'd be catastrophic. It would be catastrophic for that to happen. And, you know, that's the incentive we need to be talking about. And that's what I wanted to kind of emphasize on that, because that's where we can start getting that employment in. We can start getting mariners into that program. And, you know, I've talked about this is marriage should be the education process to tell people around the United States that these jobs are there. You know, I'm a volunteer firefighter, and every volunteer, every call we ever go to, there's a little kid there. We give him a little plastic helmet, we give them a coloring book, and we say, hey, here you go. And what every little kid wants to be is a firefighter. That's what they want to be when they grow up. And you know, we should be doing that with kids around the country, not just at high schools, at fairs or college fairs, but in middle schools, talking about this so that they know, hey, when I graduate from college, I can go. I had a very interesting question from Senator Young. Senator Young was talking about trade schools and how do we do education. And I joked with him, is like, I went to a four-year state maritime academy. That's basically a trade school. I got a college degree and a trade in the same thing. That's what we need to be advocating out there. You graduate with the experience so that you can go out into a workplace. I graduated on a, you know, on one day, and within a few weeks, I was standing watch on a bridge. I didn't need transition, I didn't need training. I could do the job day one. And that's what we need to be producing for our shipyards around the United States. And that's why I thought Ms. Snow sitting next to me was really good because she talked about that on a very small level in her family shipyard in Seattle.

SPEAKER_02: 41:29

Yeah, you know, and it's that's one thing. So this the I laugh about the elementary school level. There was a maritime roundtable discussion at National Maritime Day, and some of the National Security Council guys were there. And, you know, one thing that I have a young family, so uh I have a first grader now, but last year she was in kindergarten. So one of the things that I was, as I signed up for the PTO, was trying to get a field trip to Mass Maritime Academy, which is about 20 minutes away from our house, and they had never taken a trip there before. So, you know, I I didn't have a high schooler yet, I just had a kindergartner. So I mentioned I was trying to get a field trip for the school to go over to Mass Maritime, and so they brought that up. Well, PTO mom over here is trying to start them as young as they uh getting the maritime going, which uh mass maritime is so generous to welcome that idea with open arms.

SPEAKER_00: 42:16

But we think how much the kids would love to see that, to be able to go on a ship and see that and and and experience that. I can remember when I went on Intrepid as a kid, and it was just it was it was eye-opening. It was like amazing to do that. And you know, we have efforts that are trying to do that, trying to turn some ships into you know work centers, you know, convert one of the old fast Clip ships. I'm working with a group that wants to take the nuclear ship Savannah down to Savannah to start talking about doing that maybe on another basis for these modular nuclear reactors that we're talking about. So I I I mean, this is the type of effort we need to go. Unfortunately, we kind of, you know, again, sea blindness overtook us. And that's one of the big issues I talked about in the hearing.

SPEAKER_02: 42:55

Yeah. So we have the USS Massachusetts in Fall River around here too, and you can actually do overnight trips. I think it's mostly Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts that do that. But the big Miami, you can actually go and spend an overnight on this uh retired vessel. But yeah, I mean it's it's but here we are in proximity to not just one, but two, right? Maine Maritime Academy as well, are are available to this region, and it's not super ingrained in just kind of every day. And this is where it's got to start at least here. Same thing. I grew up in Travis City, Michigan, which is where the Great Lakes Maritime Academy is. I certainly know what they do now, I would have been a prime candidate. So had there been a little bit more messaging of trying to connect right to the community, which no fault to the academies, because I think that they are doing that well. Uh, but that's where I think, and I hope that we'll see a little bit more out of Merad for that. I think Sang has been doing that fantastically, trying to get more messaging going. Um and I I I'm hopeful that Steve will do the same thing because I was very impressed with this hearing. But you know, the other thing from the SHIPS Act that you talked a little bit about and you know, some of the good things that were happening, but we also have the public student loan forgiveness in the SHIPS Act that I think is a crucial thing and ties back to the Maritime Transportation System National Advisory Committee. So MidSnack, of which I've mentioned that I was a member previously, that was one of the recommendations that came from there was look, if we're gonna have students going through four-year trade schools, four-year academies, where they're coming out with debt, why shouldn't they be added to the list, right? Who knows? Whatever, however, you feel about public student loan forgiveness generally, there's a long list of people who qualify. And so I'm I'm happy to see that in the Ships Act as being another incentive to try to get some of the maritime interest in the new mariners.

SPEAKER_00: 44:31

I agree. You know, one of the things that I talk about a lot is most people don't realize the biggest employer of American merchant mariners is Military Sea Lift Command, the U.S. Navy. One out of five ships has a civilian crew on board that's operating them. These aren't contractors, these are people integrated into the unified command authority. They're they're actually following orders and actually can give orders to Navy ships at times when they're out there. And yet, you know, they're treated like you know, they're just like you know, like government employees working in Washington, D.C. They're not. They are substantially different. And the idea of a loan forgiveness for merchant mariners, it it's so difficult for the Americans to maintain their merchant marine credentials. It's it's another issue. It's a really difficult thing. I I mine has lapsed because I it's impossible to keep it up because the the amount of time and training, and it's really the cost is just ridiculous. Why are we not, you know, we want this pool of merchant mariners, we need them for our reserve fleet. How do we go about doing this? And so, you know, all of this has got to be kind of wrapped up into the Ships Act and talk about that. And I think loan forgiveness is a big one for that. And and again, you know, if if I'm a merchant, if I'm a cadet at one of these merchant marine schools, I'm not just paying for my education, I gotta pay for fuel for my summer, you know, two you know, 45 days on the on the training ship, which isn't a cruise ship. It's not like you're on the love boat, you're working on that ship, and and and yet I gotta pay a huge amount of money to pay the fuel. Why do we not pay the fuel? It's crazy. I don't understand that concept. You know, we want we want the you know, the young, the best, and the brightest to do that. And this is what I was talking about too, is like, you know, shipyards are gonna change. It's not gonna be just the standard welding. We're talking about AI, we're talking about a lot of different ways. One of the good things about our shipyards being sold is that when we start retooling them, they're gonna be state of the art. I mean, we're gonna go from you know, from the dark ages to the modern age all of a sudden. And that means you're gonna bring in some new technologies that we didn't have in the past, you know, robotics, AI, all this kind of stuff. That opens the door to bring in a whole new generation of shipyard workers. And again, I think we need to be talking about that a lot more. And again, that education should be done not just by the maritime academies and the unions and the shipping companies, but from Marat. I have been a harsh credit, you know, of Marat. I've talked about this a lot, that Mered has been underfunded, under-resourced, you know, much like the FMC has done. We've seen the FMC get their plus up. And I would have loved to see Steve been a little bit more proactive on what I want. You know, it's just that's your opportunity when you're going through that confirmation hearing to really set the bar for what you want to see happen. Hopefully he does that when he gets in. Zhang Yi has been doing a great job. I joke with him all the time. Is like I see a picture of him with a helmet on all the time. He's somewhere getting Marat out there, and that's exactly what you want. That kind of dynamic spirit out there and getting the message across.

SPEAKER_02: 47:24

That's right. Well, and that's what Marat is supposed to be, the promotional arm of US Maritime, right? The FMC is the regulatory arm, the judicial side of it. And you have Marad who is built for promoting the US interests, right? FMC is arguably flag neutral. You know, yeah, there's so much here that that is still, you know, one thing that I want to say is Mid Snack has provided a lot of recommendations over the past 20 years that are really circling around some of the great ideas that are coming out now. That it's it's a testament to the engagement with the industry, right? And I think that that was probably something that was lacking in focus on where the government side wanted to go. And I think that Mitsnack was always kind of sitting right there, ready and able and wanting, right, just passionate people in the industry that wanted to move forward. I love most of the Ships Act. The one thing that I still kind of take issue with in the SHIPS Act is that it will move MidSnack membership to the congressman instead of being a within MARAD kind of populated member thing. And my only fear is that then it becomes or potentially could become favored positions given to people who maybe kind of care about the industry. Whereas right now, MidSnack and the membership, the nominations, the applications that go into it are just a bunch of passionate people that want to help the industry. And so, you know, I I I as long as there still is that federal advisory engagement between the industry and the stakeholders and the government entities, it's important. But I'm I'm so nervous about that turning into a you pay a bunch of money, you become a lobbyist, you you petition the congressman, and then you just get that favored position. So we're going to get the largest companies only populating this mid snack instead of, you know, people like you and me, maybe being on it, right? Or anybody else who who just really is passionate and has some great ideas on how to change things.

SPEAKER_00: 49:27

Well, and you know, it was funny. At the end of the hearing, Senator Sullivan asked each of us, you know, our our you know, what's our one takeaway, our big issue about it? And we went down the line. And when it came to me, you know, one of the things I mentioned was leadership. It's like, it's like, who's leading this? Who's leading this effort? Under the Ships Act, there's supposed to be a maritime uh security advisor, a national advisor, I forget what the title is. And then under them, a a maritime board. And Midznak should be a part of that. I mean, obviously, you know, that's my point is is bringing that group together under that advisor is key. You know, you need that. You know, I talked about the fact that it was Edward Hurley in World War I, it was Embraer S Land in World War II. Who's gonna do that now? Is it gonna be Steve Carmel over at Merritt? I don't know. He's got a lot to tackle over there. Is it gonna be whoever's gonna be the chairman of the FMC, which I imagine will be either Laura or or Richard, probably going in there, or or that's who I envision is gonna be one of those two going in, or you know, who's gonna be in charge? And you know, midst that there's a lot of great organizations. I mean, I mean, the maritime schools. I mean, there's so much you can pull in there. And I think one of the big problems has been it's been so diverse, it's been so kind of dispersed out there that there has been no one who's really been able to articulate that and really put it together to help bring, you know, bring the forces of maritime administration and the FMC together, for example, because because you know, I think both of them can do a lot, the regulatory side, the promotion side, domestic versus international, very important. Bring the shipbuilders into this. You know, I think that's an element that's really key. And and and and so I agree, I have my hesitations about the SHIPS Act too. You know, I've I voiced my concern. I'm worried that this becomes ships for Korea, not ships for the United States. And so I want to make sure that it still, you know, is doing what it's setting out to do. I I have a I have a feeling about the SHIPS Act that it's not the final iteration of what we see coming in. That's why I kind of referred to the Merchant Marine Act of 2025. I think it's going to be a series of things that come together to finally give us our new national maritime policy.

SPEAKER_02: 51:28

That's right. And I think that that's so crucial that even though we have little comments and suggestions here and there, it is such a breath of fresh air to be having this level of inertia and movement and excitement in the maritime industry, moving things forward, really kind of bringing us out of the doldrums. And I don't want to say that we were total doldrums, but we needed this new energy and excitement and inertia that began in the springtime. You know, I think allowing for repositioning of vessels and the port fees and kind of the, you know, the adjustment of the market so that we didn't get any overnight changes to now here we are in the fall. We're we're celebrating the new training ship, state of Maine coming out, and we're just continuing to build on these successes and these conversations and the actual com uh actual questions and good questions out of senators instead of maybe even just five or six years ago, the senators confusing FMC and Marat. And even the ones who were the most educated on the different agencies were still confusing the two agencies. That I love this movement because I think that it's so needed. I also see that states are starting to take things into their own hands too, and we're seeing a lot of maritime strategies pop up. One notably, Michigan, is is forming together a maritime strategy that will kind of combine both the technical colleges that they have, the Great Lakes Maritime Academy, the components of shipbuilding that they have available there that help support some of the other shipbuilding in the maritime, in the midres region, you know, the Laker fleet and the importance there. But I think that one thing that Thule talked about, Thule Snow on the panel, was that sometimes it's hard for just even letting people know what's out there. And I see these state-based maritime strategies as the menus that states have to offer in the maritime world. What are some of the things that you want to elevate and how do you put that out there? Well, a maritime strategy sounds like a great place to start.

SPEAKER_00: 53:28

I agree. I mean, you look at Michigan, I'll go even further. Uh uh, South Carolina's talking about this with maybe the creation of a maritime academy through the Citadel. Georgia has talked about this with a supply chain kind of university through their school system. Louisiana is talking about maybe being the lead agency for a Gulf, you know, agency or entity coming together. I think there's there's huge, you know, again, for us, you know, you're right. There was always people who were advocating this. Helen Bentley, we can go back. We can always find the people in the group who were advocating for it. But what's different today is that everybody realizes wait a minute, this is really important to me. You know, I go back to Dusty Johnson, the this the congressman from South Dakota, Republican with John Garamendi pushing through the Ocean Shipping Reform Act. Republican from South Dakota is talking about shipping reform. That's because he realized that his farmers could not get grain exported. And so I think the supply chain crisis has woken everybody up to this. And my my fear, much like your fear, is that this is fleeting. Something else, you know, is going to, you know, some other distraction is going to happen, squirrel, you know, and all of a sudden we're distracted, and now all of a sudden we're not paying attention. Uh, I think I think we need to be harnessing those strategies on the state level, talking about them. You know, one of the things is states have mechanisms to get this out into their school systems, which I think is really, really important. I think MARAD should be working on education programs full-time to put out to school systems that they can tap into, you know, for the K through 12, so that if I'm a teacher, if I'm a homeschooler, I can pull up a maritime history of the United States, you know, pull that up as it we we've had that with the National Endowment of the Arts through places like Mystic, for example. Why don't we see that partnership with the Center of Maritime Excellence up at Mystic Seaport that works on that on the maritime history side? Let's do the maritime policy side today for job opportunities. There are institutions. I was just up in Norfolk at the Virginia Maritime Association. Education was a forefront issue they were talking about. How do we educate people in the Hampton Roads area of the opportunities in the maritime sector? And I'm not just talking about being a longshoreman, operating a crane. I'm talking about, hey, you can work in the corporate office, you can be the accountant, you can do the financing. There's there's there's tons of different areas that are out there for them. And so I think we need to tap into the ports entities that are out there, the terminals that are out there, the shipping lines. I mean, again, it is a very tough thing to do. And my problem is like we really need coherent strategy for that. And that's why I go back to that national maritime advisor to really do that. Uh, again, if if if I was in Steve's seat, you know, for the maritime administrator being interviewed, I would have a list, a litany list. This is what I want to do. I need I need to plus up my education, I need to plus these guys up. This is what I want. And and that's how we start doing it. And you know, we've had a very series of proactive administrations. The first Trump, even the Biden administration was was was talking about this with the Ocean Shipping Reform Act. Now we have this in in the second Trump administration. This is not going away, I don't think. I really don't see this eclipsing right now because it's on the forefront of not just the economics, but also the military side. Even the military understands that the la our vulnerabilities in in shipping are there. And everybody's talking about this.

SPEAKER_02: 56:48

You know, and I yeah, that's that's so right. And I love, you know, I think Steve is going to do a fantastic job as maritime administrator. But let me let me put this out there. One day we will have a maritime administrator, Mercagliano, and it is going to tongue tie everybody. And perhaps maybe you'll be Maret, I'll be over at FMC, and then the two of us with our powers combined, we will be moving forward US maritime dominance. We'll we'll we'll certainly wait our turn, but uh wouldn't that be great to have both of us up there?

SPEAKER_01: 57:18

I I I don't know. I don't know if if if the maritime professors are of that capability for us to be there. Do they really want to unleash us on everything? Uh it would be great. Don't get me wrong, Lauren. It would be it'd be uh tremendous amount of fun. And I think we would we would do a great job.

SPEAKER_00: 57:33

I I I think you know, I'm I was I was so honored and and and really just humbled to go up and talk before Congress with this and to put this out there and really lay out what I thought was really important. And and I I was even more humbled by the questions, by the interests of the senators. Uh, this was not canned questions that were coming in. This was we really, I mean, you could tell that the staffs are involved in this, that they understand what's happening. There's a lot more attention being drawn to this. I mean, I had a discussion with Senator uh Curtin from Utah that was basically five minutes of just back and forth. And I could tell that he really wanted to know more. How do I, you know, in Utah again, you know, it's not like a huge shipping state. There's not a big port on uh, you know, in Ogden or on the on on the Great Salt Lake. But I mean, he realizes how important this is. And so I thought that was really telling.

SPEAKER_02: 58:27

Yeah, well, and and I think that that's you know, well, before we go too far, I do want to bring it back to Senator Cruz made a surprise appearance. Um, and and it's significant because not only was he well prepared, very prepared for the hearing, but then he's so interested in the topic that he made a surprise appearance, right? You said that he walked in and and I mean he's the the chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee, so he's above this subcommittee that it was in. But this is such an important issue. And he brought up certainly, you know, Texas as a maritime powerhouse and highlighting Galveston and icebreaker builds. But what was that like when he just walked in?

SPEAKER_00: 59:06

Well, even before he came in, Senator Cantwell, who is the ranking member of the committee, was there to begin with. So see, you know, the the subcommittee is is is Senator Blunt Rochester from Delaware, but Cantwell was there from the very beginning. But when Cruz rolled in, and he did roll in, he comes in, he sat down next to Senator Sullivan, and Sullivan kind of immediately turned it over to him. Cruz was direct. Number one, he's the guy who nailed my name perfectly. He was absolutely got my last name correctly. But his question that he gave to me, I you know I went back and listened to his question afterwards, and I was like, wow, that is a really in-depth, well thought out, excellent question. And I hate I like I feel like I I could have I I could have talked about that question for an hour. Um what was it again?

SPEAKER_02: 59:46

Just so the listeners are all on the same page.

SPEAKER_00: 59:48

So his question, I I I will absolutely chop it up because it was it was a really well articulated question, but basically, he ran through the history real quick that we've used subsidies in the past. How do we ensure? For a shipbuilding effort in the United States against China, which we can't be competitive against. How do we fund this? What are the means and processes we need to be putting in place so that we can start resurrecting our shipbuilding? And that was basically the core he got to. And I talked about the fact that again that we were investing outside in foreign shipping, not in American shipping. We've got to, you know, I basically laid out the issues of what's wrong. And then he said, Great, now how do you fix that?

SPEAKER_02: 1:00:28

Well, you also posed the question, and then he goes, Well, then answer your own question.

SPEAKER_00: 1:00:32

Yeah, and he said, answer your own question, which is like foiled. It's like it's like it was such a good answer, and now I got to answer, which I was ready for. And I said, Okay, this is what we need to do. And you know, and again, I think that's what they want to hear. It's like they don't want to go again. What they don't want to do is the answer, it's it's subsidies, therefore we got to throw money at this. We have got to create a system that is going to be not it's not gonna be holy, there's got to be government involvement here. There's no way to do it because when you look at China, Japan, and Korea, that there's government there all the time, and they're they're providing a lot of assistance, either directly or indirectly. But we need to create an environment which I think works both with Democrats and Republicans when they like the idea, hey, tax incentives for the consumers, for the shippers moving the cargo, that's you know, that's helping them. And at the same time, you can talk about, hey, this is going to get cargo onto US ships, which means US shipping companies and U.S. mariners are gonna benefit from that. And we can start seeing that kind of revitalized. So, yeah, it was it was it was really interesting to see not just members of the subcommittee, but members of the general committee, the Senate Committee on Commerce come in. And there were senators in the crowd coming in, staffers coming in. And so we had a batch of of members coming in and out throughout the hearing. And like I said, we had a lot, you know, Senator Young gave a second set of questions for that. Senator Sullivan, Senator Blunt Rochester from Delaware. She gave a great talk, Blunt Rochester, about her grandfather in the maritime industry. I thought that was really important to talk about the kind of connection there, and then had a series of great questions. Uh, it was it was it was very it was a very impressive hearing. You know, I'm always impressed by watching a hearing, but to be there and see the senators ask the questions they did were were really important.

SPEAKER_02: 1:02:16

Yeah, and and right, I think her grandfather worked at the Philly shipyard way back when. So she was recalling, you know, she they had recently found something, and she I think she was getting texts as the the hearing was on. From her sister.

SPEAKER_00: 1:02:28

Her sister was sending stuff, right? Right during the hearing, just before the hearing started and during the hearing.

SPEAKER_02: 1:02:31

Yeah, well, and it was great too to have Jeff Fogle there, right? Of TOEP. So they're the VCM, the vessel construction manager, which I mean, essentially the the project manager of all of these training ships going through. And it's really, I think that you all highlighted this well, that it helps eliminate those change orders that slum things down, that and it also helps eliminate some of the really molasses slow procurement and and you know, things that happen on the government side that it just removes that. So, like if the government has some new requests, send it to TOETE. But then TOE can actually take quick movement, realign supply chains, figure out where parts need to come in, because it takes a while for a vessel to be built. And sometimes your needs change. And by having that private entity in between is so helpful to speed things up, keep it on budget, maybe even under budget, even uh ahead of schedule, right? There's been such a value to this.

SPEAKER_01: 1:03:26

No, my one thing I'm in a hearing is you can't just bird out, you know, burst out anything. So you got to wait till you're called upon.

SPEAKER_00: 1:03:33

And there was a series of questions that went to Vogel and Matt Paxton, largely by Senator Sullivan, talking about you know the inefficiencies, how do you do that? And you know, Jeff was great talking about how Tote really maximizes that, cuts down those those orders. And but but Sullivan asked him at one point, you know, what's the biggest hurdle? And I so much wanted to just key my mic and say it's the Navy, it's Navy C Systems Command, it's NAPC, that's the problem, because it's it's the government change. You're exactly right. It's the ridiculousness of what we burden the shipyards with to make them completely unproductive. I was talking to a friend who is just on one of the most recent Navy oilers, and he was talking about the piping that's on these ships is unbelievable. It's it's all stainless steel, and it's like, why would they do that? It's so expensive. And it's like, well, they want the the ability to carry various fuels, but in every tank, is that the requirement? Because it creates a huge amount of money. Whereas, you know, in Tote, you know, with the vessel manager program, they can, you know, logically have discussions and sit there and say, what do we need on this ship? What can make this ship work? And I think, you know, the the program has issues. It's not 100%, you know, even total tell you that. There's been issues. We've had some issues with some of the ships. Yes, they do a hundred percent better than what the government does, but that's our model we need to follow. And I think that's really key. And and I think I think it was great to have uh Jeff Vogel from Tote there to be able to talk about that.

SPEAKER_02: 1:04:58

Yeah, and I I that's also true in that you can still have change requests, right? I mean, good new ideas, or even as they're building these new training ships, there have been modifications and updates that have been made from the lessons learned from the last vessel that have this just been a government order of five vessels, you might not have been able to fix problems. And so you might just continue to have the same problem all over all five because, well, that's what it says on the order, right? And you can't go change it.

SPEAKER_00: 1:05:25

No, and you know, the other concern I have, Lauren, is this is we were very focused on Hanwood Philly Shipyard. And the my concern is it's Hanwood Philly Shipyard. It's the only shipyard we're talking about here for building commercial shipping. It's like, okay, we need other yards. It's it's like we need, you know, who else is gonna build this? Because we can't build everything in Philadelphia. It's just it's not gonna be physically possible to ramp up. So that means who else are we gonna get? Is NASCO under General Dynamics gonna come into this? Are we talking about Huntington Engels, Pascagoula coming in? Newport News has said they don't want anything to do with this, you know. So are we are we talking about Bollinger? Are we talking about a consortium of Schwest and maybe Hyundai coming in? Or not yeah, I think it's Hyundai coming in. You know, where is this commercial going to be built? Or are we talking about Greenfields? Are we talking about brand new shipyards coming in? Because that's the other issue, is that that investment has got to be there to be able to do that? And that was the other thing I was talking about is listen, I want to invest in shipping, but I'm not gonna see a return for a batch of years. So what does that mean? Are we talking about bonds for shipping? Are we talking about some sort of other kind of financial mechanisms that a 401k investment opportunity that we develop for shipping? You know, what are we doing to get money into this, especially if all of a sudden our port fees are going to go down and we're not gonna have that money that's available?

SPEAKER_02: 1:06:45

And that was something that was even coming about when offshore wind and that industry was kind of booming was you know, there's a lot of vessel creation and excitement for, okay, now we need new vessels for this new purpose that could be multi-purpose, but also how do we get that going? And how like who's to say that this industry will need this installation vessel in another 20 years? That this concept of having longevity to the kind of value of this really heavy, financially big investment at the beginning will have long-term staying power, or even utilizing those vessels. I think Jeff made this point too of utilizing those vessels or promising some sort of military use for them so that if they become the commercial reason to have them isn't quite there, then they still have a purpose. You keep the mariners going, you keep the vessel going, and you keep that kind of commitment to the long-term, you know, there was a lot of beating up of Wall Street, it sounded like from the panel of let's get Wall Street kind of in investing in this side. How do we make it an incentive for Wall Street? Was part of the theme there too. But I also think that it's the grassroots effort coming from these states, elevating, hey guys, we have a shipyard. You might not have thought about this new nuance to our shipyard. Florida, right? A shipbuilding state. The state of Washington, another shipbuilding state. That having their we do this well might be something that if every state had a menu of things that they do well, and it's not just shipyards and shipbuilding, it could be we have a great port for, you know, Philly's really good for imports of cold storage. Like putting that out there, saying Philly's really good for imports of cold storage. So if we were to ever get to a port strategy, we, you know, the ports still need to compete, right? That's the whole essence of FMC authority is competition. But having that part of our national strategy of how can we get better about the infrastructure around some of these areas or what is actually out there that is good. We don't really have a roadmap for that.

SPEAKER_00: 1:08:41

No, we don't. And you know, that that's again one of those key things. Go back to Carmel's hearing, and he was asked about ports, and that's something that I think Marriage should be doing is overall looking at the ports. Who's that big, you know, outside agency looking at port, port safety, port strategy, port security? I think it's extremely important. It's one of the things I hopped on with the smaller shipyards, talking about tugs, towboats, and and and ferries. Start building up that infrastructure. Really important to do with it. I I you know, I get, you know, I may get accused of being too rah-rah-rah with the Trump administration, but let me go against the Trump administration here for a second. Their strategy against wind is hurting the shipping industry. You know, the fact that they went 180 on wind, that was a huge investment shipping was going. They were looking at that wind industry to be a real big effort to kind of fire them up just in Norfolk again. I saw Charybdis, this wind installation vessel, sitting there at the berth in Portsmouth, not doing anything because you know, wind is is kind of in this kind of flux state right now for it. And so, you know, you you can invest, you can start. I mean, I mean, we don't talk enough about those yards on the Gulf Coast, Shi West, and all those other yards down there that can pump out supply boats, you know, in a year. I mean, that's they can do it well, they can do it efficiently, they can do it at good cost too. Again, we were not talking about you know the big you know, container ships that are three, four times what you pay for in Korea, Japan, or China, but we're talking about on the coast, those are ships that can be built out, and I agree a hundred percent with what Jeff and Matt were talking about. Listen, those little OSBs can be used too for unmanned for the Navy for a variety of different projects. You know, as long as you have that, you know, what I one of the things I talked to Senator Cruz about is we need to provide protection for the shipping companies on the downward side. Hey, my business has gone down. Now I'm stuck with this huge, massive cost ship that's nothing but a hole in the water. I'm throwing money in. What do I do with it? It's like, well, hey, put it in the reserve fleet. We'll take it off your hands, we'll put it in a reserve fleet because it's a tanker, it's a cargo ship, and we can use it for activations for our strategic reserve, which is what the original plan was back in the 70s for the reserve fleet, is we'll take those ships that were funded through the offshore, the the uh the construction and operational differentials off your hand after 20 so years so that you can build a new ship. And and and keep this is what the Chinese strategy is, by the way. Build ships that are good for 15, 20 years so you can keep that thing churning. That's kind of what we need to get ourselves into. And again, that goes to a larger maritime strategy. One of the things I worry about the Ships Act, it's very many ways focused on shipbuilding, but it's not looking at how we integrate this into the overall strategy of shipping. And, you know, that that's what we need. Marat has paid for this thing from Center of Naval Analysis, a strategy. We just have not seen it yet. I'm hoping that when Steve Carmel gets in, we finally hear what this strategy is, or do we need something different?

SPEAKER_02: 1:11:32

And and you know, I guess my fear goes back to we've been so focused on military ships that Center for Naval, you know, it I'm just afraid that that strategy will be so militarily focused instead of the side.

SPEAKER_01: 1:11:44

It will be, I guarantee you that. I guarantee you.

SPEAKER_02: 1:11:46

Which is why I'm so excited for Steve. And and I think Sang does this really, really well too, that they focus on the commercial side, right? That they focus on the actual industry and and market driving factors. And you know, I I'm still not totally convinced that offshore wind is entirely dead.

SPEAKER_01: 1:12:02

I do Oh, I don't think it is either. I agree with you on that.

SPEAKER_02: 1:12:05

Yeah, I I think that if it can find a way to for the business to make sense and make money and and not entirely be subsidized, I think that was maybe perhaps one of the sticking points that that you know, if if there was a reworking and a restructuring of the model, that perhaps if it does make money, I mean, I feel like even Trump can be convinced, even though it seems like this is a personal vendetta, but perhaps not, right? Perhaps not, not that if there, if there's a business case, I mean, anybody can be convinced. And I think Trump is is no different there. And also I think that it kind of goes back to what we were talking about earlier, too, where there can be a little bit of gun shyness in the industry. Like we've heard excitement before, and we don't want the bottom to drop out. And having offshore wind go away, it was kind of enter commodity here. Maritime was getting excited, and now is perhaps. I mean, we can be a little bit of a jaded, we're a very passionate industry, but we can be a little bit of a jaded industry, and that just another example of the bottom dropping out. And I don't think that that is following through, but but it certainly isn't soon forgotten either. And and there were some big investments being made into some of these supply vessels and infrastructure vessels. And I think that was a good point that you made that like we were excited to be moving forward on that. I'm I we continue to be excited on the overall movement for maritime for sure.

SPEAKER_01: 1:13:21

I I think I I number one, I think the mascot for the maritime industry should be like Eeyore, because that's that's basically everybody in the maritime industry. It's like, oh, whoa, is me. This is this is it's only a maritime till things go bad.

SPEAKER_00: 1:13:33

We're not Tigger, we're definitely not Tigger, but it's it's definitely that. I I I think you know, again, the wind industry for me is a perfect example of things like the Jones Act reform. We should be talking about, for example, the amount of money we spent to build the wind installation vessel, Charybdis, was was tremendous. It was it was a one-of-a-kind vessel, it was a huge investment, and we probably could have built that vessel overseas faster and cheaper, gotten it into the fleet, and then we could have focused on building the supply vessels, all you know, all the vessels, the ancillary vessels that will service the wind wind wind farms, which is where the money actually is, you know, in the shipping side, because you got to go out there all the time and do it. The the wind installation vessels are really, you know, one of the kind, very expensive vessels, which will generate money once you start doing it, because it will have business to do it, but it's a massive slow investment to get that ship up and running. Uh, and again, this is where we need to think about it. I do agree that that the Trump administration can be brought around and talked about, you know, when you understand that wind is not the end-all be-all, you know, I had this question from Senator Marino from Ohio, you know, can can wind generate enough power for a shipyard? And and right now the answer is no in the United States. There isn't, but you can see that it's done in Europe. There are some yards that can be fully renewable energies. So it's always hard to answer one of those yes-no questions because it's like I I live as a historian who sits here and says there's no yes-no answers. It's always kind of hard. But but I agree with you. But again, what we need to do is have advocacy for that and talk about this. Like, this industry is generating construction on a smaller scale in our shipyards. It's putting mariners to work, it's creating business in the ports. I mean, I mean, Virginia had turned the Portsmouth Terminal into a wind terminal. If I when I was there, there were turbines there, there were, there was, you know, installation vessels, there was everything geared up to be putting wind farms off the coast of Virginia. And now that's all on hold. So that that does create a bit of a problem.

SPEAKER_02: 1:15:29

And the installation vessels were also kind of hopeful for this. And and this doesn't by no means is this a rah-rah, go offshore wind, but but just the the fact that installation vessels is a near shore job that provides more sea time, right? It's not it's not giant go across the world sea time, but it's still sea time, right? I mean, that's and and that's some some of the mariners out there are looking for. I don't want to be gone for six or nine or 12 months at a time, and and maybe a little jaded from COVID, where they got stuck on these vessels for an additional six or nine or 12 months at a time. They just want something that maybe a week or two and then they'll come back and they can still be part of their family's life.

SPEAKER_00: 1:16:05

No, and and I'm not advocating for any type of power at all, but for for the shipping aspect, it was really important, especially because how the maritime industry got kind of got burned on offshore oil, and that was completely off, you know, that was completely outsourced offshore. And so the the the maritime industry really lost out on that in many ways. And so I mean, here is this potential for it. And again, I I think if we put this into coherent strategy, I think the president, the administration, a lot of people will sit there and say, okay, this is actually part of a larger strategy that is actually not a bad thing for us to be looking at. Because, like you said, a lot of mariners, you know, don't want the job working for military sea lift command and being deployed for four to six months away from home. But sailing on a supply boat out of the Gulf Coast or working 28 days, 28 days, 28 days on, 28 off, you know, I can do that. I have I like that schedule. And it allows me a lot of flexibility. Plus, I'm I'm in and out of U.S. port, so I'm not gone all the time. And it gives us that reservoir of pool of mariners we need so that if we ever do have to activate the reserve fleet and do a military operation, we have that pool in which to draw from. And again, that goes to my issue about leadership. Where is the leadership in this issue? Because what we need is really visionary leadership to do it. I I I don't ever buy the big man theory of history or big woman thing of history, or or that didn't come out the way I want it to sound. But it's just it it's you know, I don't there's got to be the the the kind of the the the you know the head coach with his staff under Nietzsche need him and his assistants to orchestrate and build that. And I think that's what we need more than anything else to help us get this over the line. Because right now, the Senate, you can see it in my hearing, are listening from a diverse group of people. What they really need in some ways is a central repository or a central place to go to to get that information. They're getting it now, but I think I think there's going to be an information overload eventually on this.

SPEAKER_02: 1:18:02

Yeah, and I I think that this is totally right. I think that we're, you know, we're all on board. We want to make sure that this is all moving forward. We want to get the mariners out there. You know, I often talk about kind of that boomerang effect, right? We have these 20, you get out of Maritime Academy, you go out to sea, right? If you get your unlimited unlimited license, because not every mariner that comes out of an academy is actually getting an unlimited. Although I will say Great Lakes Maritime Academy, 100% of their grads get unlimited license. It's not just a Great Lakes license, it is a an unlimited, unlimited tonnage, but they they don't all get them, contrary to maybe what you might assume. But also you try it for a couple of years and then maybe you get married, and then maybe you have a kid, and then you don't have that same desire to be gone for so long. That sense of adventure becomes a sense of burden. And so we lose people because it almost is like, I'm not going back out there. And so they drop their license, they don't want it anymore. And then flash forward 15, 20 years, their kids are off to college and they're like, I kind of want to go back out. I think that'd be fun. Or even maybe I could go be a charter captain down in the Caribbean, right? Or something. But like, wouldn't that be great to use my license? I was talking to somebody who was in the nursing community, and something similar was happening during COVID where people were kind of leaving the industry saying, I'm not gonna renew this, this is too much, I'm not coming back, to give it a couple of years almost of a cool down, and then now they're having this return that they've modified. I I haven't looked into this specifically, but this is what I was told modified nurse license return so that it's an easier thing because you haven't lost all your skills or your knowledge. You just didn't keep us current. So maybe it's a abbreviated get you back up to speed license on what's been going on recently. I don't know if one time you get an airline pilot's license and that's it, and you have it forever is the option, right? Because that's been talked about a lot is that you only need to take the test once and then you got it forever. But I I think every five years is is probably a little fast. I have my 50 ton license, and every five years I have to renew it. I go for the the I don't even use it that much. I mean, but but I go for the doctor's appointment for the DOT health screen, you know, all the drug tests, the everything. Uh and it's five years is pretty frequent, to be honest, too. And and you know, it I'm probably one of the categories of wouldn't that be nice if we ever needed her locally?

SPEAKER_00: 1:20:18

I no, I was 100% agree. Senator Kelly gives this great talk. He was up at Marine Money this year, and again, talking about the other issue is is how to get Wall Street involved. I mean, you had Senator Kelly up in Marine Money this year in June, had an entire day talking about America. It was the best attended day of Marine Money was that day. And so we're even seeing Wall Street brought in. I want to see more of that integration in some ways because I thought that was a really interesting day. But to go to license issue, Kelly talks about the fact that he has three licenses on his wall. One's his pilot license, one's his third mate license, one's his third assistant engineers. He goes, the pilot license is good, the other two aren't, because you can't keep them up. And you know, I was you basically explained me. It's like I sailed for five years, I came ashore, got married, and then after I was, you know, married for five years, my wife was like, You can go back to sea now. It's it's good, you know, you can get back out. No, I know it would have been nice to go out when I started teaching, for example, in the summertime, go out on one of the school training ships, go, you know, do a do a tour on that. But it's so hard to bring that back. I'm of the opinion that you keep the license, but what you need to bring back are the endorsements. You know, you need STCW, you need all the, you know, get those. And then we should have mechanisms in place to keep the there should be a merchant marine reserve program, not under the Navy, but a merchant marine reserve program where, hey, I want to keep my license up. Well, you do that by doing a weekend uh, you know, a month and maybe a uh two weeks a year, and you go on one of the ready reserve force ships, you know, scattered around the United States. I go to Charleston or Norfolk, go on board the ships there and you know, get my license up to date, go maybe to mid-Atlantic Maritime or to one of the one of the union schools and get my license up to date, you know, and and that shouldn't be at my expense. It should be if that's a national, you know, that's something that helps the United States in time of conflict. And I agree that in time of war, I'll I'll man a ship. Again, this this is the type of stuff that I would love the Maritime Administration to be doing. I would love this national maritime advisor to be doing. I think these are the type of things that that make the industry a lot more. And, you know, one of the things I've advocated for to the state maritime academies and to the federal maritime academies, you need to mandate a course in maritime industry policy history. You know, you need we need we need a course because every graduate of those institutions should go out talking about the role of shipping in the history of the United States and what is out there in the industry right now for your advancement. I learned how to pilot a ship from point A to point B. What I failed to learn or appreciate is the business aspect ashore. I I mean, if I wish I knew that a little bit more, or else I would have you maybe transitioned to a shore-based, you know, working the business side of it. Same thing on the engineer side, you know, what's that shore-based business look? And how do we integrate them in? The unions are doing this now. If you talk to the maritime unions, they're not going for the recruit that's gonna be with them for 20, 30 years now. They understand they may get those, but they're probably gonna get somebody for two to five years. And how do you sell that is a little bit different. Hey, you're gonna make a lot of money very fast. If you need to pay off loans and get yourself out of debt, this is the way to do it. Plus, if you stay in the union while you go ashore, maybe after a few years you can come back in and make money on the side. You don't have to sail every year, but maybe you pick up a charter here or there in a contract and do that. And so I I think again, we're starting to see that change in the industry come around.

SPEAKER_02: 1:23:40

And I really like the idea of that maritime reserve because exactly that, right? One one weekend a month, you get to go out on a boat. You get to go out on a vessel, sounds pretty good to me. You get that sense of adventure, but then you get to go back to to your everyday nine to five, whatever it is, life. And I mean that there's some really, really good value there. I would also say we can't forget about the hospipers too, right? And and I think that there's some reform that needs to be made in Hospipers being the unlicensed side of things. We need to make sure that it's easier for them to get all of their licensure or their their certifications. Because as part of Midstack, one of the interviews that we did to learn more was we talked to someone who was trying to go through the hospital program, and they had to fly all around the US just to piecemeal how to get to the certificate, the baseline certifications that they could go to work for it. But it's something that not only should there be a page on the Mered website that says, so you want to be a mariner, right? And like kind of it outlines how you do that. Because you're thinking about it, you'd probably Google how to be a mariner, right? That would that would be a fantastic first page. But then if you want to be licensed or you want to be unlicensed, how to piece together my skills to form where I need to go next. I mean, I think Nemepa was starting to do something like that where they were working on how to get interest in the industry into actual practical jobs in the industry. They they had a kind of a whole whole booklet that talks about it, but it's a role for merit, right? I mean, there's they have a lot on their plate, they have a lot to get get going on. And I'm I'm confident that they will make some good strides, but I think that that's all part of it. So we have gone so, so, so long. I so appreciate all of your time here today. But but I'd be remiss if I say, well, two things. One, we have the National Maritime, the Maritime Action Plan coming out next week. We will probably do a whole reaction, both your show, my show. Maybe we do a joint show where we react to it. So we're not going to go down that rabbit hole. But is there anything else from this Senate hearing that you really wish you you mentioned a few things throughout our conversation today, but is there anything else that you really wish you would have gotten time or been asked throughout the course that you really didn't get a chance to, or anything that you want to elevate as kind of a final thought that you you were hopeful from of this hearing?

SPEAKER_00: 1:25:52

Yeah, I mean, there was a couple of issues that obviously, you know, you you you're very time-limited in your response, your five-minute opening, and then your responses back or just a minute or two. So you don't have a chance to really go a lot in depth. I I was I was very happy afterwards. Senator Young came up afterwards and we had a great conversation, and and he wanted to talk a little bit more. And you know, Senator Sullivan gave homework to Jeff Vogel and to uh Matt Paxton, which I thought was very funny, for answering questions. I I mean, I guess I would say my my big takeaway was was was really this is that you know what's in you know, what I want to do is is we're under a time crunch. The Ships Act has got to get passed. It is not perfect by any means. And you know, we highlight and discuss that in many ways. One of the things that we talked about kind of off committee in between everybody else was to get the house on board. That's more my big fear. The Senate is on board with the SHIPS Act. I don't have a problem with thinking the Ships Act's gonna come out of the Senate without a problem. The problem is the House, where the House right now has that in about a dozen committees. And I'm hoping to see it. Uh the talk that Senator Kelly talked about was maybe they'll bring it down to a couple of committees, maybe transportation and infrastructure and and house armed services, which I don't think it needs to be in armed services, but it will wind up there because of the military applications. And the House is the one that worries me because that's the one that's gonna need the better education on it. The Senate seems very well versed on this. The House is gonna be a harder sell, and I think that's gonna be a big issue going forward. So I I think I think the maritime action plan will actually help because it's gonna identify some key things that need to be done. And I think you know, keeping this education going forward, I would have loved to see you know those two FMC slots and the maritime administrator filled sooner rather than later. Uh, I hope that the confirmation goes through faster now that they've had their hearings and the votes take place so they can get in the buildings. I think those are really important to do. And I think just, you know, you, me, and everybody else who has a voice keep talking about this and keep educating people about it, uh, because we we do have an influence. I I I don't think I would be on that committee if I didn't have an influence with the YouTube channel and and the writing I do.

SPEAKER_01: 1:28:05

It's uh it was it was kind of weird uh to be asked uh to do that. So that's kind of what I would add, Laura.

SPEAKER_02: 1:28:10

Well, Dr. Sal goes to Washington. You did a great job representing the industry well, uh petitioning for initiatives that we all think are good ideas. Maybe that shipper incentive language is something, right? It seems like shippers have a good connection to to congressmen and and house members. And you know, maybe we're gonna see Dusty Johnson come back around. I think he was celebrated as the AG congressman of the year when he pushed through when he was working on Osra. So yeah, we'll we'll see. I think that those are all great thoughts. I I think even in its imperfection, the Ships Act is necessary. We have to see it go forward, we have to get it moving, right? I mean, that's it. We can't just keep stalling out. And, you know, in in many ways right now, Congress is stalling out. So we'll hopefully we can get back to work, we can get back to moving. But it's also nice to see that maritime has not stopped, right? Obviously, we don't. Even during the middle of COVID, we didn't stop where this is an essential workforce, and you 90% of everything moves by ocean transit, and maybe that'll move as we see a little trade balancing, but it's still going to be a significant number. If it's not the actual good, it's the commodity that helps support it. That maritime and ocean shipping will always be one of the most important things you've never heard of.

SPEAKER_00: 1:29:20

So I you know, I said at the beginning of my statement, you know, in 35 years of doing shipping, this is the most visible action I've seen in it. Uh, and you know, in my 35 years, I've seen the maritime industry just decline. So it gives me, you know, optimism, encouragement. I don't know what the word to use here, but it's it's it's the best. Now, the maybe it's too optimistic, but we'll we'll wait and see.

SPEAKER_02: 1:29:44

You know, yeah, you you say that it's Eeyore, maybe it's Mickey Mouse. I think it might be Mickey Mouse. He doesn't only have good days, he has some. I I'm I'm gonna say the maritime industry is Mickey Mouse. We're hopefully optimistic. We're gonna keep it.

SPEAKER_00: 1:29:55

I think Donald Duck, at least he's got the sailor outfit. We can go we go Donald Duck.

SPEAKER_02: 1:29:59

That's right. That's that's a good one. All right. Well, we'll wait for your puppet show on Donald Duck doing goes to Washington. Well, thank you so much. So great to see you as always. We really appreciate your time, and we'll we'll have you back soon, hopefully.

SPEAKER_01: 1:30:13

Lauren, it's always a pleasure. You know how much I love talking to you.

SPEAKER_02: 1:30:16

Likewise. Thanks, Sal. It's always so fun having Sal on the show. What a powerful conversation. What an interesting conversation. And honestly, one of the most encouraging hearings, like I said, that we've seen in a very long time. This hearing showed what happens when lawmakers listen to mariners, shipbuilders, and logistics professionals in the same room. It wasn't about a soundbite session, it was a strategy session. Sal reminded everyone that U.S. shipbuilding isn't a nostalgia project, it's national infrastructure. And his testimony offered a clear roadmap, learn from our history, rebuild capacity at home, and remember that ships, shipyards, and sailors all have to rise together. And Sal did what he does best, bringing context and clarity to these complex issues. His Ships for America warning, instead of a ships for Korea warning, was a reminder that we can't outsource our industrial base. And his proposal for a maritime reserves program, which Senator Cantwell picked up on, like I said earlier, gave Congress a practical framework for linking workforce readiness to maritime security. A few takeaways that stood out for me, we've done this before, we can do it again. History shows that when America aligns industrial policy with maritime investment, we win both jobs and security. Also, the allies are partners, not proxies. Working with trusted shipbuilding nations is smart and important and essential, but ownership and control of core capacity needs to stay here too. As Sal said, collaboration is welcome, but dependence isn't. Mariners are the missing link here too. Without a trained ready maritime workforce, new shipbuilding initiatives will stall before they start. Sal's maritime reserves idea really deserves serious attention. Readiness isn't just about the hulls and the bases and the ships, it's about the people. And look, my biggest takeaway, the momentum is real and it continues with the Maritime Action Plan due November 5th and the Ships for America Act on deck for perhaps this year, next year. This is the most forward motion we've seen in a generation. And I'm really hopeful for the next, I'll call it six months, maybe by April. We'll let's we'll continue to watch this obviously from now and then, but maybe, maybe by April. We'll have some legislation. We'll certainly have the bones of where we're going. We'll hopefully have a national maritime strategy. I am hopeful for where we're going next. And this hearing was wonderful to watch and great to catch up with Sal and hear the things that he didn't have time to say during the hearing. Look, if today's episode has you wondering where the FMC fits into all of this conversation, or maybe where Mered's authority begins or ends, check out my just in time learning course, FMC vs. Meredith, who does what? It's available now at the MaritimeProfessor.com. This just in time learning series is a series of courses that are 30 minutes or less, just what you need to know plain language education. A quick thank you to our partners at Manifest, the future of supply chain. Coming this February in Las Vegas, it's where the entire ecosystem from ports to tech to trucking all come together. Join me in over 7,000 of our closest industry leaders, innovators, investors, and friends this February and save$200 if you go to manifest.com, manifestvegas.com slash join slash the maritime professor. Look, if you like this episode, be sure to like, follow, subscribe, and leave a review. Want to go deeper on these topics or bring this kind of insight to your team, visit themaritimeprofessor.com to explore corporate trainings, tailored briefings, and on-demand webinars that make complex maritime regulations practical and easy to understand. Because if you understand the rules, you make better decisions. And if your organization needs help navigating the legal and strategic side of ocean shipping regulations, head over to Squall Strategies. That's where I provide my consulting services, regulatory guidance, and overall general industry information that's specific to your situation. As always, this podcast is for educational purposes only and should not be considered legal advice. There's no attorney client preference created by this video or this podcast. If you need an attorney, contact an attorney. But until next time, I'm Lauren Beegan, the Maritime Professor, and you've just listened to By Landed by C. See you next time.