National Chamber Foundation Cargo Security Summit: Opening Remarks

U.S. Chamber of Commerce
April 24, 2003

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. I'm Tom Donohue, the Chamber's president and CEO, and I'm very pleased to kick off this event.

Events like this just don't happen. It takes the support of committed people and organizations. So I'd like to start by thanking our sponsors:

• Accenture
• GE
• Deloitte & Touche
• Siemens
• Traffic World; and,
• The Institute for Defense and Business

I'd also like to extend a special thanks to our supporting organizations:

• American Science and Engineering
• American Trucking Associations
• Carriersnet
• The National Cargo Security Council
• The Intermodal Association of North America
• The International Air Cargo Association
• The World Shipping Council; and,
• George Mason University

And of course, our National Chamber Foundation deserves a great deal of credit as well.

NCF will host more than 50 events this year – a remarkable accomplishment by anyone's standards.

This is our second conference on supply chain security in the past year—and not our last. On October 14-16, we will hold our first International Cargo Security Conference in Hong Kong.

Securing the supply chain requires cooperation between points of origin and destination, so it's extremely important that we work closely with our trading partners in this endeavor.

The fact that the Chamber is devoting so much time and energy to cargo security is an important statement in and of itself.

It says that striking the right balance between security concerns and the demands of the just-in-time global economy is one of our nation's—and world's—greatest challenges.

We're still feeling our way around because this is a new priority for all of us. Let's be honest—before 9/11, security efforts focused on primarily loss-prevention. The complex issues we face today barely registered on our radar screen.

But now we understand fully that we are in a never-ending war against those who hate us for our freedom, opportunity, free enterprise, and way of life.

We have to take steps to neutralize these evil forces without compromising the very principles they wish to steal from us.

Enhancing security while protecting our mobility are NOT mutually exclusive goals—though they may appear to be on the surface.

With the right set of policies, we can have both. There are ways—through technology, new risk assessment tools and increased cooperation with our trading partners—to prevent harmful cargo from entering our country while allowing for the quick passage of safe cargo.

More than 11 million trucks and 2 million rail cars cross into the U.S. each year, and 7,500 foreign ships make 51,000 calls in U.S. ports annually.

If we adopt measures that significantly slow this extraordinary movement of goods, we will have handed Osama bin Laden the victory he seeks.

Today's event is about finding solutions to cargo security challenges that don't undercut economic security. Throughout the discussions, I ask you to keep in mind a few guiding principles.

First, we must take a global, intermodal approach to supply chain security. We are only as safe and secure as our weakest link. What good are safe ports if the railways or trucks feeding into them are unsafe, and vice versa?

With all of the freight modes represented here – rail, port, trucking, and airline – today is a great opportunity to advance ideas on an overarching security strategy that makes sense to everyone in the supply chain.

Second, let's keep in mind that we can't completely eliminate every single potential risk to the supply chain. A completely airtight system is impossible to achieve in a free and open society. So there will have to be some give and take, some compromises as we strive for the best possible solutions.

And finally, enhanced security will occur only through effective public-private partnerships in which costs, resources, and goals are shared fairly between government and business.

Let me close by briefly mentioning what the Chamber is doing to ensure security while protecting opportunities for economic growth.

We're meeting regularly with top Department of Homeland Security officials—not in an effort to get them to water down security proposals, but to make them fully aware of the impact those proposals could have on the strength of our economy and global competitiveness.

We also recently released our port study, a two-year long project that spotlights the inadequacies in our port and associated rail and trucking infrastructure and the need to develop an adequately funded national freight policy.

The lead author of the study, John Vickerman, will share with us the key findings in just a little bit.

Finally, on the legislative front, we're pushing for increased public investment in our aging transportation infrastructure.

The Chamber strongly backed the supplemental war spending bill that contains new funds for port security, and we are a vigorously pushing for passage of TEA-21 and AIR-21 reauthorization bills due up later this year.

It's a difficult time to request additional government funding for anything, so we're going to need the support of everyone here to come out ahead on our transportation funding goals.

We're now going to hear the Department of Transportation's perspective on cargo security from Deputy Secretary Michael Jackson.

Michael is the department's chief operating officer, overseeing the day-to-day management of DOT's 11 modal administrations and its 100,000 employees.

Michael had a previous tour of duty at DOT during the first Bush administration, when he served as Chief of Staff to the Secretary.

In between his two stints at DOT, Mr. Jackson was chief operating officer at Lockheed Martin IMS's Transportation Systems and Services. IMS provides high-tech services to toll authorities, freight companies and 35 state governments.

Prior to that, he worked for me as senior vice president and counselor when I was president of the American Trucking Associations. He did a wonderful job managing intermodal, international, and technology policy matters.

Michael is a great friend, confidant, and advisor, and he's doing a great job at DOT. I'm very pleased to welcome him here today.