President Obama Cuts Red Tape For Infrastructure Investments
President Obama, recently announced during the second leg of his “Middle Class Jobs and Opportunity Tour,” a new initiative that will cut through red tape and work towards reducing the time it takes to approve infrastructure projects in half. This is good news for many of the projects all around the country that have been delayed in in moving forward in the past due to government complacency. This announcement couldn’t have come at a better time as the Panama Canal expansion is set to be completed sometime in 2015.
During his speech, the United States’ President made reference to the urgency when he stated, “The Panama Canal is being revamped down in Panama so that it can accommodate even bigger ships and these cargo ships are so big that if we don’t remodel our ports here in the United States they can’t dock at our ports and they’ll dock someplace else and we’ll lose that business so we’ve got to up or game when it comes to infrastructure and the good news is that when you do that you are putting people back to work right away… and you’re also laying the foundation for future economic growth.”
In the past, the U.S. has made huge infrastructure investments to stimulate their economy and it is most crucial at this time, in the ever-changing and growing global economy, that they do so again or else they run the risk of not being able to compete effectively when the global economy kicks into high gear in the next few years. The President acknowledged that he wants to “put people back to work improving our roads, our bridges, our airports, our ports.” He further articulated that
“Our workers are at their best when we’re building stuff.”
The United States actually has little choice but to take these measures to speed up the upgrading and modernizing of shipping port infrastructures. In fact, it still may be a little late for some ports to be ready for 2015 but, at this stage with these announcements, it gives them some hope that at least they can get started at it; sooner than later. President Obama is absolutely correct when he says that the new big giant post-panamax shipping vessels will dock somewhere else if they can’t use many American ports, simply because of their enormous size. It’s a no-brainer. In order for more U.S. ports to handle the massive cargo ships they have to be capable.
The Port of Los Angeles is the busiest container port in the United States and is hoping it’s going to stay that way after the Panama Canal expansion opens in 2015. It currently ranks in the top 20 in the world for container ports by volume but will be under some increasing competition once the giant new container ships are able to pass through the Panama Canal’s new bigger third lock and thereby gaining greater access to major ports on the east coast of the country.
Up until recently, the West coast has been the main beneficiary of the bigger cargo ships from Asia. Now with the expansion of the Panama Canal allowing for larger vessels to pass through, it creates enormous opportunities for ports on the East coast of the United States, allowing them to finally be able to effectively compete with the West coast ports; for more business from the eastern parts of the world. One eastern region in particular, Florida, is quite confident it will be ready to compete, when the time comes.