>> let's get started. thank you for being here today and joining us live at the hudson institute. thank u for joining online. it is a pleasure and special thanks to c-span for bng with us today and sharing this discussion with reviewers. -- your viewers. this is a second in the series of cversations being organized by the american maritime security itiative. it is a joint project between the husband institute -- hudson

institute and the navy league of maritime strategy. the group is focused on national andconomic chaenges as we face dealing with china as a relates the commercial maritime industry. the shipping is at the intersection of trade and transportation, national security and economic security and the first conversation in the series was with busby. you can find that discussion on the dson website and the focus today is on shipping and economic security and the sick -- concernedhat china has might -- has obtained the powe to weaponize control over the international maritime supply chain. most experts would say if that word -- china words again that poweand use it -- were to gain that power and use it, the

potential harm could be catastrophic. we are delighted to have with us chairman peter defazio who represented oregon's fourth dirict and hbegan his service in 17 and retired 10 weeks ago at the beginning of the current time --congress. he was chairman of the coittee, the large committee in congress for the last four years. many accomplishmen. we don't ha the time to say many of them but from personal experience, i appreciated your deep understanding othe maritime industry and many other subjects. thank you for your service in congress and your commitment to doing the job the right way. welcome. fmr. rep. peter: i appreciated -- appreciate it.

michael: how is retirement? fmr. rep. peter: it is a work in progress. michae we are glad to have you with u we will t into the conversation a we will get into trade policy. this is a confrontatiol question. you told the earlier that you oppose every free trade agreement that came for congress in your 36 years. fmr. rep. peter: that included most favored nation treatment for china and cna's --can you tell us why? fmr. rep. peter: economics in college and graduate school and to me, the theory of competitive advantage didn't make much sense in the 21st century. most of our trade has been based on that. secondly, a lot of our trade was colored by coming out of world

war ii,or we had the marshall plan. -- where we hathe marshall plan. we were the only iustrial power in the world and we controlled the seas. we had to make a lot of ngestion to other nations to move things but he came to appoin whitney with nafta -- to me with nafta. clinton said 600 jobs in the u.s. and mexico's total tb- total gdp if they snt any -- every pey on the u.s. compes with new jerse it was all about goi across the border to access chear later, lack of -- labor, lack of environmental standards and clinton was ving trouble passing it and since environment of standards work in it, they adopted a nonbinding agreement to get democratso vote and pass it.

inu --eu, they did thgs different we -- differently. they did. they eu --the eu, it took quite some time to succeed. there is no labor projections -- protections, no one with environmental enforcement and we ll eer a borderless agreement with them regarding the production of goods. it was a way to outsource and when china came along, with clinton, we came out of the soviet union collapse. 10 years before. it was a rosy period of, democracy and capitalism, it's descendant -- its dcendant. we wl bring china along by

allowing them to have permanent mfn status and they will folw the rules. they haven't. before, when we had nfm on a limited basis, we could set the period over which we could renew it and s, within two years, you don't deal with these abuses, we will not renew your status. we made it permanent because u.s. companies who wanted to move to ina which had even cheaper later, wanted assurances that their investments will be protected indefinitely so we made it permanent and that was a huge mistake. michael: granting full trade rights to china was a mistake. fmr. reppeter: indefinitely by going to what we now call normal trade -- there's way to deal

with that. i would reconsider moving them either back to, and analyzed -- an annualized or -- status or even revoking their pntr. we have imposed tariffs on them and they dnot have a huge run of the right here because they manipulate their currency down and a lot of their industries are subsidized. they added tariffs thawill come out of movinthem from schedule one to schedultwo by saying, you don't ve that until you clean your act of, it would not be a huge inflationary increase in the u.s. by any counts. michael: the assumptions that you mentioned, you didn't trust china would do what they said, the assumptions that were offered in selling the china

free trade deal where that china -- were that china would democratize, that economic freedom and prosperity would cause the ccp to share power and we assumed that china wouldn't turn on america the way has and that didn't seem like good assumptions. fmr. rep. peter: no. it was the glow after world war ii, when we allowed discriminatory trade policy to put in place against the u.s.. i mentioned most people don't know about, most of our competitive nations have a value added -- additive attack. they are allowed under the agreement to bate they entire value add attack to their -- but

in the 1950's, we out people to say you cannot do that with intent -- income tax. income taxes cannot be rebated. we put ourselves at an extraordinary disadvantage. we will lower the corporate tax rate. we are -- created this whole problem by allowing that to happen in the same thi when china exceeded later. we were in the gloof the solution of these -- the soviet union. they will move in the direction of capitalism and democracy. michael: that is causing questioning and -- in many areas in our relationship with a focus on -- but the focus is on shipping and you lead a subcommiee on coasguard and maritime, which has jurisdiction

over the regulation of ocean shipping except as it relates to naonal security which is an interesting caveat. it seems to me that ocean shipping is critical for national securit in any event, the supply ain crisis of the last several years ll squarely within the jurisdiction of your committee. congress, your committee approved in the house and senate class -- past legislation to respond to that. what are your thoughtsn the supply chain crisis and that legislation? fmr. rep. peter: it was an immediate crisis. we had 100 ships to get into l.a. long beach. containers went from the -- $2000 tput a thousand dollars containers -- $220,000

containers. --to $20,000 containers. there were many abuses that were being put upon the american industry. we had basically gone through a series of the regulations over timehat relate to shipping. let me go back to 1882. secretary -- maybe coleman. it's commercial independence and in time of war, places its very existence at the mercy of the powers which control the ocean. that was 1880 two and in 1920, we adopted the jones act, which i think we need to talk about more. world war ii, up to leading to world war ii, we had a u.s. maritime commission, built 6000

ships. then, at the end of world war ii, we pulled back and the ships coming off and we sold them from overseas and they went under foreign flags. we were getting subsidies to the u.s. flaso they would have to compete with cheap foreign labor. in the lack of other isss. reagan took away the subsidies in the fleet gets old overseas and finally -- and the fleet gets sold overseas and finally, -- here is the premise of that. this is to achieve a competitive and efficient motion transportaon system. a policy that will put greater relice on the marketplace. we have done that and we have

three conglomerates that control 95% of the u.s./asia trade. the marketplace has created the conglomerates and had a norman it -- inordinate power. one company controlled the truck bed to take the containers of the port. they said you can only use ours. and so, then they had containers sitting on them and they were charging people because their containers were sitting on them. we wereocusedn the economic crisis andhere wasn't a time where we canocus on how we can rebuild american maritime. we wanted to deal with the impacts of inflation and the pply chain. that is how the bill gets shaped. michael: we pointeout in some of the work and we discussed e fact that, unlike air

transportation and telecommunications and other critical nwork industries, there are no american shipping companies in the 12 -- top 25 globally. there are 85 u.s. flag ships trading internationally out of a global fleetike 5000. these e the companies and ships that carry jt about everything. commodities and manufactured goods and intermediate goods, which is part of everything us. --else. because there are no large american international shipping and few american ships, we have little control over the american maritime supply chain. we are ctomers in that deal. our consumer economy depends entirely on international ships -- i am pontificating. excuse me. the shipping equipment of -- the

equivalent of uber. there are no american drivers. that this happen much when you are working on that act? michael: -- fmr. rep. peter: no. the jones act is the last effort into maintaining u.s. ship building industry. thatas been under constant attack and was under constant attack. there are groups that say, this drives up the cost for american consumers. puerto rico has made a rain on it -- run on it. even though we had a cgo report that says puerto rico is vantaged by having a dental -- dedicated fleetf vessels. because they need regular

service from the u.s., for a whole lot of things. if they didn't have that, they will be at the end of a very long international shipping chain controlled by three conglomerates. and they are small-market. they would not be interested in providing things on a timely basis to puerto rico. there was a recent -- under the biden administration, after the last hurricane. they need diesel. i talked to puerto rico representatives and she said ere is no diesel shortage. the administration, being pushed by a small group of members in congress, claiming this was a problem, waived the jones act. for ship, it was in -- for ships already in transit loaded with crude from the united states.

there was a foreign flagship and they were allowed to disperse to talk --puerto rico. the total wages of that ship for the crew is oneerchant mariner. there are always pushing. in a mock time in congress, i have been on the defense with people are starting to wake up. it is time to go on the offense and begin to have serious conversations about what is going to happen. when we went to war in the persian gulf, we had to use foreign flagships. we have a ready reserve fleet which is decrepit. rebuild, revitalize, and modernize and we are doing some of that. we have academies -- an academy a new ship. we can build the ships here and

we can do a good job. they are going to be more pensive. you ge all o the spillover effects into our economyhen you build thosthings here as opposed to buying them from overseas. you don't get any added ethics. you don't get -- create any jobs in all the things that go into th ships -- and all the things that go into the ships. the jones act was important the wind industries,here getting massive subsidies -- they are getting msive subsidies. the only insurgent ships are foreig but the main resources are building one and other u.s. manufacturers of other companies would build them if they knew there was going to be on market and they could compete. thesare in our territorial waters they shall fall under the jones act and i went four years ago to

the wind industry when we were doing a bill and i said, l me do this. we will have a five-year window d if it is five years, basically, they contract at five years from this went insurgent --wind insurgent. they initially agreed. the americanetroleum institute said you ca't do that, because we wavered many years agand we are doing all of ourtuff in the gulf with foreign flags and foreign crews and it is wait cheaper -- wait cheaper. --way cheaper. do we value foreign jobs and econic security are do we chase the cheapest -- or do we chase the cheapest -- michael: i am on board with what you said about domestic shipping trades. top up the international -- you

talk about the international shipping indtry in the small americans involved. the bigger concern is maybe what u alluded to in your quote from 8082, --1882, if the country doesn't contr an international shipping industry, it is in trouble and if the trouble here, it is not just that we don't control, tre is a growing dominance of china and china's involvement through the system and that reects the stated and best -- objective of president xi jinping going back 10 years ago in one of his first speeches, which is we are going to make china a global powerhouse when it comes to the maritime industry. a fu range of industries because any entry that does that, -- country that does that, they grow in every country that backs away from the maritime indust, they declined. fmr. rep. peter: the ville road

initiative -- belt road initiative. some of them are -- some industries of our -or our allies and we n depend on them to carry our troops. in a time of conflic the chinese are spotting themselves all around the world, 100 ports. they are getting influence in those countries, which control the foreig flags. it is less and less likely that we are going to easily be able to call on many othese countries at a time of crisis with these foreign flags, and say, we have to move our troops. we need to move our agricultural goods overseas. we can't get shipping. the chinese are being very deliberate. some of them they are putting in

strategiclaces, right by the suez canal, djibouti, and haifa. they have a contract to run a ports in haifa where a fleet is domiciled. th will move everything in and out of the harbor and we did not get into cranes. michael: i have a few data points. china, state owned shipping company, cosco shipping is going to be one of the top containers in the world. no american in the top 25 and china has glad the mobile -- global order book for shippi instructions compared to less than 1% first -- u.s. shipyards. around 80% of shipping cranes, are made in china and the pentagon's -- has learned that

these cranes can spy on the supply chain. all of this data is being combined with other shipping data and giving the chinese the ability to track about any container cargo shipments anywhere, including u.s. military cargo. you mention beijing having a foothold in 100 port in many countries and a growing share of marine finance and insurance business is just one of the hooks we relied on to enforce sanctions on russian oil. how should we react to all of this? fmr. rep. peter: i suggested that we may want to -- and there is legislation pending in congress iroduced by republicans and democrats to reconsider permanent nmal trade relations with chi. the qution is what dyou move to? do you move back to an condition

and time limed approval subject to them changing their behavior, or do you take the gger step of pulling the whole thin out and saying, they're so much abuse goi on here -- there is so much abuse going on he that we will move you to the same scheded tariffs we had for rusa. it is generall up from a average from 3% to an average of 34% except with -- going down and all that, it isn't going to beme anywhere near 34%. i mentioned earlier, there was a lot of press about there was a buick made in china. when section 301 was applied, that is 24% tariffs. my godthe price is going to go by -- up by $8,0 in the u.s.

the chinese -- the price of the ick went down despite the 24% tariff. it seems like we are going to need a reay substantial club to deal with this and we cannot let it go on much longer. at that point, we will be capped. michael: to take you to recent action, the microchip act, the u.s. market share of microchip manufacturing went from 25 -- or whatever and what from, down to talk percent. its -- we are relying from china and south korea and china -- taiwan on certain chips. we had 10% of the market share. it is thinking that in terms of the american maritime industry, we have to get bette

relationships with china and a firmer footing on the trade side of things but in terms of starting to regain footing for the american maritime industry, we are below 1%. is there a path that should be considering that would get us toward a more meaningful market share? fmr. rep. peter:fmr. rep. peter: ere is some minimal number of u.s. flag internationalarriers that we need protect ourselves. like i say, we built a lo of the bottoms from world war ii, and we gave them a subsidy to deal with the fact that they are competing against this incredibly inexpensive foreign labor. the other things are with convenient so i think we have -- this may be a conversation, armed services and homeland more

than the traportation infrastructure committee about what is the minimal merchant fleet we need. let's just assume, what has worked in the past like with the persian war, that we can go to foreign flags and say, we need these ships and they provided them. let's the assumption with the chinese growing influence with many, -- countries with foreign labs, if the conflict is coming, they might influence countries not to cooperate with us. we should make that assumption and talk about, whats our minimum? i started with the ready reserve fleet. that is specifically for the military. we need to increase the supply and we need to update those ships. that's a basic starting point. we have to emphasize the trading, mariners in the country. we have a big workforce

allenge -- michael: we have a big workforce challenge. i have talked abt the need -- 80 56 in the national trade and he put the number as 250 as a reasonable number to cov a real estate sealift requirement in light of what you mentioned in terms of the foreign flag, and ships not respondingnd atition. these are contested. these will be operating in contested waters and without u.s. total dominance of the airspace. we would lose ships and we need a lot more ships and we need ships for the economic side. fmr. rep. peter: we need to question the basic concept of flights of convenience.

it is a new thing but they don't have too much shipping. . when i was pushing hard on this with cruise lines that are -- are foreign flagged. i said,ou are flagged in liberia and liberia happens to be a registered -- the restry is somewhere -- it is turned in with a bunch of x coast guard's like officers for the registry of liberia but it is great becausit is cheap and you avoid taxes and the registration fee is low. you are i said so what happens the next time someone hijacks a cruise line on the high seas? are you going to call the liberian navy? there is none.

this is an absurdi. it almost happenedn aviation. they started to try to do it in aviation. norwegian air relocated itself in ireland. they were going to fly planes to the u.s., by malaysian pilots. singapore and flight attendants under contract. and saidhey were goin to try to create flags of convenience. luckily they collapsed. during the pandemic. this is a model we do not want to replicate anywhere else. it is failure for us. imagine the civilian reser and we subsidize the wide-body plane to a certain extento we can call theto carry our troops overseas because we don't have enough capacity in the air force

to do that. these are all big, red flags being waived. michael: you put it on the aviation industry and the differences. the aviation industry is structured totally different than the maritime industry. airtime industry is willing and able t meet certain safety standards. you are eligible to operate in international trade. rmure that is te. in aviation it is a very competitive syst. but it is also controlled. america gets landing rights in the country, or vice versa, if an american flag airplane gets thosrights, not a flag of convenience airplane, that is not the way the international -

mr. defazio: back to the flags of convenience, i fought, i got involved in scandal in the philippines about 10 or 12 years ago where anybody could b papers at any level. you want theap newspapers? here you go. you are a captain now. they were running this marketplace. it finally got clamped down on. does mongolia send out people to inspect their ships and their crew and ensure? could do a lot more port inspectis and a lot more enforcement on this side and say if you're coming in under one of the suspect flags of convenience om a country like liberia that hardly exists, or others, we are gog to subject you, we want to see the credentials of these mariners, we want to see the inspection of these ships. that is euros -- that is

something else we can do to fight the flags. michael: you mentioned american airlines. it appears to me when you look at theotal of someone getting back to china andhe concerns we have around the degree to which they have control over so many segments of the inrnational shipping supply chain from buildings, to crank and structure, to information to operating the ships and crewing them and so on,hat is a major concern from our economic security standpot. if they have the power, they acquire the power to exert control over that supply chain, can we trust that theyouldn't use it to our disadvantage at some point in the future? mr. defazi over taiwan, for instance. no, we certainly cannot. they say, well, we heard the chinese because economically

they are exports. but that is a country that is very rigidly controld. michael: and coming out covid lockdown. mr. defazio: they have facial -- facial recognition, they monitor you. if you cross the street when you're not supposed to, at a certain level you lose rights or your kids lose rights to go to school. the level of control is extraordinary. in the u.s., if certainly all these goods disappeared there would be havoc. michael: there would be. mr. defazio: i don't believe they wouldn't use that tool as they get more and more dominant. michael: it seems to me it is something that could escalate. they could start at a certain level imposing economic pain and

ration it up depending on how things go. if they completely shut down the system it would be catastrophic for everyone. but as you say, they could absorb their political system. it is going to an for -- it is going to absorb that. hopefully it will never come to that. not ju aboutccepting chinese control -- mr. defazio: my position on conditioning or people say it is going to hapn two years from now, three years from now. develop other sources. i had this fight, there was a chinese rail company totally owned by the people's revolutionary army. theyere sending in totally subsidized light rail cars and trying to take over the whol u.s. market. they were going into heavy mail -- heavy rail trying to take

over. putting people out of business in srt order. i finally was able to get an amendment on a bill to s they coulhave no further contracts in the united states because it was a state owned company that was not fairly cpeting. the stock wasn't very good and we had considered -- and we had security concerns about th tracking people. they are very clever. there are o manufacturers. one was bus and one was trained. very powerful members of congress fought. because they had 0 jobs. there could be thousands of jobs making these things. they had 400 jobs picking up the shrinkwrap and doing a little bit of assembly. so i couldn't end their existing

contract. now they are going around, their transit district that they already have are going around saying to other transit districts, we will subcontract with you and you can get this east chinese stuff that is totally subsidized. this is going to be a very difficult struggle. michael: when we talk about the maritime supply chain, supply chain and logistics are brought terms that mean a lot of different things depending on who you are talkingo and what the issues are. the pply chain and logistics issues we are talking about are not about a specific pe of commodity. microchip -- microchips or refined rocket. it is the transportation system that bngs all of this stuff to us. our concern is, is that out of our control? mr. defazio: what little we are

exporting back. during the crisis people were hit really hard. to get back to china, when they were going for mfm, they allowed in a big shipload of wheat. eastern oregon, a big wheat country. they came , this is a huge new market for us. we have never been able to get in there before. but at the same time i received a translated radio badcast internally in china by a trade minister saying, don't worry, we are not going to become dependt on the united states for our foodupply. after that one ship when in and they got msn, the next year the same ranchers came in to see me andhey sat there and said, are you going to say it? and i sa, say what? and they said aren't you going to say i told you so? and i said i am not going to say

that. we hav got to fix this. they do thisn so many ways of saying your wheat is no clean engh for us so you cannot bring it in anymore. this is a real dilemma. michael: i appreciate the conversation. we have got some time for questions. i think it is really important conversation and discussion. i don't think there are easy answers. this has been going on for such long time. turning the corner and getting the ship poied in the right direction it's going to take a lot of work and a lot of patients. i really appreciate your leadership on this through the years. anything you would like to add it. i would love to take some questions. let me open it up to questions from the audience.

in the back. >> hi, i was hoping you could speak about cargo preference. there has been an effort i our government and within congress to use convenience for government taxpayer cargo. with these other food agencies. could you talk little about that and what you think would get these agencies and some folks in congresso change their tune on cargo preference? mr. defazio: we had to fight back because the nonvernmental organizations get involved and say, wait a minute, week supply more at a lower price if we use these foreign flagships. that has been an ongoing off and on again struge over the last decade or so. cargo preference definitely needs to btightened up. michael: more questions?

[indiscernible] michael: he is going to give you the microphone. >> you saiwe have been very dependent on china. we can go in anstore within a mile and find 100 different things made in china. as consumers we are vy dependent on these things no not trying toe confrontational, how do u balance that? there are national security concerns. there are also concns to consumers. so which dwe take more seriously? mr. defazio: can we mitigate it and balance it and i think the national security has to ultimately trump.

but you have to think about how we are going to get there. becae of the dependence. people are beginning to reassure under policies adopted by biden and the chip stack is going to -- the chips act. the meltdown during covid, they say this could happen again. so they are reassuring to me extent. we also have to be looking at other areas of the world who are not possible to the united states as potential suppliers in the future. that is going to take time. its going to take time here to get back up chip manufacturing in other areas. i had despite numerous times over the percent of transit vehicles that have to be manufactured in the u.s., every time we would raise it, all the

transit people would say, oh my god we were told there would be no more. we have managed to oveome it and find substitutes. we didn't do it, say today it is gog up to 75%. it was over three years, five years,e are going to move up to 75%. as you movp, people say, ok we can supply that, we can supply this, we can supply that. right now they don't see any potential for markets, they are not going to make the investment. look what happened with protective equipment. that was a wake-up call. it turned out during the pandemic i found out this guy in texas, i read an article in the wall street journal, bought an old implant, he had six lines, he could make a mask, n95.

only one was running. i went to homeland security and said, give this guy a contract. you have got to givehis guy a contract that says we wi buy this much over this period of timend if we don't use it all we are going to put it in stratec stockpile because we might do it again. but you are guaranteeing this purchase. they finally did a contract with him for texas. for dental offices. but not as big. that ia part of the key. assuring through, some people n't want to talk about it, assuring through industrial policy that these markets are ing to be there. michael: very good question. i apeciate your response. the other tng i would add, look at so of the things we are talking about on the maritime side. the market share ware seeing, containe construction, 96% in china, 86%, we would not

torate in this cntry that kind of concentration. and yet because they e outside thunited states and different coorate entities, we seem to be paralyzed to do anything about that. if everybody played by the same rules, there might not be the kinds of issues we are dealing with. mr. defazio: state owned enterprises, we can and should be terrifying. i wonder if we could do that under existing laws. regularly stated enterprise. republic government, rub- government, running those countrie they take it over and they can jack the price up. that is ultimately going to happen with some of these things.

it is the bargain now but what happens when they have got the total market and you are totally dependent on it? michael: question back there. >> thank you for this wonderful conversation. i am interested to learn more about the competition between the u.s. and china. america and africa, can you talk more on that? michael: the work that china is doinin other countries like south america? appropriating the deal between iran and saudi arabia? mr. defazio: china is doing a lot. building infrastructure around the world. they bring in most of the workers. these things are not free.

another have deteriorated. not worked out. but these countries are then on the hook to china for the loans they took from the chinese this is a pretty regular occurrence. it has hpened numerous times in africa and elsewhere where the products -- where the projects have ultimately failed but they still have to pay the bill. they are using for the most part oriented towards economics. but as they control more and more ports, the only one that overtly used regularly by the chinese navy. they are getting a fthold in ports all around the world where their ulmate plan is we are going to be able to use those in times of crisis and we can then spread our naval seapower around the world.

thu.s. has pulled back a lot on those sorts of things overseas. we have left the gap in the chinese -- the gap and the chinesare pursuing those things. michael: questions? >> hi, thanks for the discussion. i wanted to get your thoughts on the impact of friend shoring and big u.s. manufacturers. apple is a big example. aecent example moving production out of china io other countries. how much dyou think that wi hurt china's shippi dominance? or an effect on the way they can donate a lot of their basic

manufacturing moves o? mr. defazio: the locale, to some extent, 95% of the asian trade is controlled by three nglomerates. one of those is totally dominated by the chise. the other, partially, one, not so much. it dends upon basicallyhe location. as they grow more and more dominant shipping, where are you going to go, except maybe europe? a lot of what you are talking about, the electronics, that cos by r. they are not putng that stuff on coniners on ships. that hasn't been much of a problem except of course during covid when flights were grounded and all that.

that is something at this point an time they cannot dominate. a lot of the consumer good you're talking about, in that case it will work. when you get by bigger and heavier items that go by sea, it gets more difficult. beginning toompete with the chinese shift assured to crane, it is huge. they have to go on special ships. the chinese have built those special ships. michael: we have a little bit of expeence with that. that is a proposal ports authorities at this point starting to reassure crate

construction. i am not sure whether reassuring or near shoring or friend shoring -- mr. defazio: the more it happens, the threat it continues to happen, the more likely china will play by the rules more. there is less vulnerability our supply chains when that happens. we have talked about central america based on my experience. the benefiof going there, you get lower labor rate. on shoring is best of all if they can make that work. timately iis about diversifying the supply chain sources. that is a real important part of all this. it doesn't really address. the part that gets overlooked, maritime logistics supplies the ipping part of it. the shipping is controlled, is

overly controlled by china. we are invulnerable to them in my opinion. and we nd to try and migate that vulnerability. the gentleman in the middle there. and that guy would be next. >> want both of your thoughts on i rep. it is building its supply chain resilience, especially for southeast asia. you mentioned abt the philippines and multiple southeast asian companies -- multiple southeast asian countries. on the u.s. side there are no tariffs. there are a lot of market potentials, they want to get into the u.s. market. there is not much discussion on tariffs. what are the alternatives american can alter -- and offer

for southeast asia? we do not have fda's, directly the u.s. does not have them. mr. defazio: you are a little bit be on my area of expertise on that. is tylan in thecco -- the thailand under wcco? our average is lower than any other trading nation in the worl under the schedule we have submitted to the wto. thailand is already getting the same access as china.

that is probably a probl. thailand does not have large status owng enterprise. so you are still at a disadvantage unfortunately. even though you are getting the same tariff. that is why i am arguing we should move china off and begin the condition to put them on schedule too. then that would be a great advantage to countries like thailand when suddenly the tariff goes from three point 4% to almost 24%. then your goods would be, way

more competitive than the chinese goods. >> i am interested in cranes and other enabling aspects of port management and what particularly scares you and what you think we have to do that goes back to the resilience question particularly as we look at national security implications. mr. defazio: i talked a little bit about they control the port. they know the movement of the u.s. ships in and out is. the same thing with cranes. they can be tapping into what is going on on what ship and where is it going as they are loading

the ship. if we got to more of a time of conflict, unfortunately they would have the intelligence right from that spot. we can take over the cameras, we can do this, we can do that. that is not the solution. just so we can get a cheaper crane. it is a bigger issue than that. we used to make beautiful cranes. we could make them again and n have to worry about what sort of software is in them and where it is tnsmitting the data opposed to the ship and what they are going to do with it. it doesn't necessarily have to be conflict. just give them an unfair competitive advantage. you are leading the ship to go there. ok then, we figure out a way we

might get that market. michael: just to build on that, the owner of the chinese crane maker was quoted fiveears ago saying, we sell systems. what is valuable is not picking th box of the ship and putting it on the dock. the information you canerive from all of that, we can slice and dice that and sell that back to you and others just like you have done throughout the consumer economy today. that information gets sliced and diced and sold. the information is really powerful in the consumer piece time setting. in some respect that is competition. but it is also a real concern in the context of a global

competit that doesn't have our best interest in mindhether it is piece time or in war there is real concerns abt that sort of thing. front row. >> how important do you think sustainable fuels are for the ships? the u.s. has a narrative, u.s., that u.s. companies sustainable el. companies like intlake, crowley, are all on the cutting edge of greener fuels which is something the chinese companies and their shipping companies are resiant to. with all these other areas at a disadvantage, how important is

it we push the sustainable fuel side of things. incribly important. everybody talking about got to ba solution particularly in shipping. potentially in aviation. the question is how do you obtain? there's four different types of hydrogen. and where the oil companies say are going to capture all of the co2, the excess methane emissis and were going to sequester it in e ground somehow. and then you move on to green. how do you produce thereen uld be very sustainable will

be using renewable power. it's a very mason industr parts of the ira, the investment reduction the inflation reduction act very and aptly name might call me as a what's the big ira deal? what's it going to do to my clients? [laughter] so, you know, they're going to subsidize witall differe technologies in different parts of the country. and even move, there's like this one little transit district and they have buses and they wanted to go green and they couldn't afford electriso they said well how could we do green hydrogen craing water and

producing thr own green hydrogen. and there's market for it too. then there is pink hydrogen which is produced by nuclear power. we are potentially moving towards nuclear reactors they're going to be standardized. you still have the waste issue to deal with. these were first developed at oregon state university. there are a couple of companies in the approval process. there are different ways of producing hydrogen. there's tremendous promise there. other sustainable fuels in terms of -- i just read about something i totally don't understand in california. they can take mixed waste and turn it into, the carbon comes out a solid and that' marketable for something.

i don't know how it works. there's a lot of cutting edge technology. now we are having conflicts between, because there are so little out there for sustainable aviation fuel. there worried about trucking moving to hydrogen. we really have to get ahead of this. electricity is not going to be the solution for aviation. even though some peoplere experimenting with hybrid. it may or may not be the solution for long-distance trucking in this country. because of the technology is really called in the charging takes quite a while. at this point we don't have any charging network that's also part of the iija and the ira to build up a network. theoretically were going to build out a chargingetwork that is being run by sustainable power. that's whall the investment

when into solar and all those things. we are taking some very big steps in that direction. >> gd answer. i enjoyed it. i think were about out of time, aren't we? we can take one more if anybody has a burning question? i want to stop and say thank you it's been really good discussing from my perspective will certainly learned a lot and kind of want to thank you for your dedication to this country. you're a great example for young members of cgress coming up in terms of taking this seriously and doing the best you can year doing a great job. mr. defazio: 36 years i never expected to stay that long. atf all the people are at

served in congress on the 65th longest-serving member. michael: thank you so much. [applause] [indiscernible]

about half an hour. >> good, thank you, sabrina. and think you all for joining us today.