Sound On: Shipping Post Covid, Jan 6 Hearing Ratings

that a lot, a lot, a lot. Bloomberg Sound On with Joe Matthew on Bloomberg Radio. Welcome to the threshold of the weekend and the fastest hour in politics, as we tackle some of the most pressing issues with a special guest. Steve Balmer is with us, the founder of us A Fact, the owner of the l A Clippers, former CEO of Microsoft, and more on his initiative to make government more trans parent and facts easier to find.

We'll also talk about the impact of inflation, the tech route lately, and what might be next for anti trust here in Washington. Later, to lawmakers reach across the aisle and get something done, We'll have both Congressmen Dusty Johnson Republican from South Dakota, and John Gara Mendi, a Democrat from California, on their new legislation to lower shipping costs

and inflation. You know, we talk every day here on Bloomberg Radio about government policies, the impact they have on the economy, on people's lives, and in the political sphere. The truth is often tested by the debate. Facts are used and abused, if not overlooked. Not everyone has a

Bloomberg in front of him. That's why Steve Balmer launched a nonprofit called USA Facts, which gathers massive amounts of government data and puts it together, makes it accessible in a way that people can understand the impact of policies and specifically what we're spending on them. It now boasts an audience about twenty millions, equal to the size of

a lot of media companies. And I'm glad to say that we're joined by Steve Balmer, of course, the former CEO of Microsoft current owner of the l A Clippers, along with his work at USA Facts. Steve, welcome back to Bloomberg. It's my pleasure to be here. Thanks for having me. I wanted to start with a fun basketball question, but well, as you know now, I'm from Boston and I'm just running on empty today. You understand this, I do, I do. I can be sympathetic, thank you. You know,

we're always hungry for data here at Bloomberg. I'm guessing you know how to work this terminal a lot better than I do, actually, But that's why we were drawn to the work that you're doing at USA Facts, and I appreciate your being here to talk to us about it. The data tell a story and bring context through facts that at time in our history or the idea of

facts is being challenged. Sometimes. Part of the problem that we experience, Steve here, in the news media is the splintering of audiences, right, people seeking information to reinforce what they already believe. You're out with your annual report here. How do you get this in front of people? Well, a lot of work, actually, and we do a combination of trying to help people find via search, our newsletter, come to us directly, and we also buy a lot

of advertising. Even though we're not for profit, we really want people to get the facts, and we're out there social media primarily encouraging people too. And when we say the facts, we're saying two things. We're saying numbers, and we're saying history, no forecasts, no forecasts adjectives. Adjectives can get pretty partisan. Ironically, yes they can't. Numbers don't get very partisan. So we try to we try to stick to those two principles. And of course we're only using

government numbers. Um. I know even those are suspect to some people. I have a lot of faith though in our our government and our statistical agencies. Is the aim to get this in front of people directly though this is a you know, a directed consumer product if you will or do you want to see news organizations using this in the context of their story? Is is is it all of the above? All the above? Okay, I would

say all the above policymakers, media, but primarily consumers. At the end of the day, we we produce a lot of things. We produce uh and your report. Your audience will understand the notion of producing a ten K Securities and Exchange Commission report more detail, very dry, just the numbers. We essentially have a reference library that's searchable on our site to find important numbers and graphics that people might have that are not in our annual documents. And then

we try to keep up with current affairs. Um, I'll find a bullet USA facts dot Org. There you go. We're not for profits. I think a little announcements. Okay, I don't have to tell you that people have lost trust in government institutions. This has been a big lesson over the past couple of years. Are we at a point based don't you just said about words versus numbers? Are numbers more valuable than words right now? Numbers in graphic Some people don't like numbers. I mean, they just

don't resonate. It's just not in people's mind. Charts do do more good for some people. But that's a way of delivering numbers. So it is a way of delivering numbers. But it's an important distinction. I don't want to scare anybody off and just to say, look, if you don't

want to look at tables and numbers, that's fine. Now there are people who I would say just aren't interested, uh in the news, or they're not interested in that middle ground where you really want to see what's going on, What really is the quality of our bridges and roads, what really has happened with inflation? If I said to you a fuel prices today, inflation adjusted, are exactly what they were pretty much in two thousand seven. Most people go, WHOA,

that's but it's true. It might not make people feel any better because people get adjusted to those lower prices. And you know, this is not a USA facts point of view, but it is my exception. The citizens in the United States are our population. Our population likes consistency, and when things go up and down, whether it's prices or employment or the stock market, that's unsettling to people because they get used to a certain a certain way of doing things. And uh, you can see a lot

of that in the numbers that are available. Some things just keep getting better, which is awesome. So it's numbers against the backdrop of history. It is you have to have that context for them to matter without context versus history. Firsts population, some numbers grow just because our population grows. Uh, in the context of other numbers that surround. Foreign aid is the easiest example. Foreign aid is roughly one percent

of all government spending. And yet I think many Americans will say no foreign aid if we just cut it. And I think most people think foreign aid goes to poor cunt trees. It doesn't. It actually goes mostly to countries with whom we have some kind of military interaction. Our country is trying to emerge from one of the most challenging periods in our history. I think you would agree a pandemic, an insurrection, if I can use that

word now, historic inflation, and a war in Ukraine. I was shocked to read that nearly one out of every seven hundred fifteen people died last year from COVID. What a statistic. That's only in the US, which helped to lower the average life expectancy based on your report by

almost two years. Where are we in this recovery culturally, economically, Well, it strikes me, you know, a million people roughly have died, and if you look at the number of people who died in versus the difference is almost exactly the number of people who died from COVID. So life has been consistent except for this COVID overlaid, which has been serious and real. The third largest killer if you will, in what's COVID behind only heart disease and cancer, which are

generally the big two. So it is a It is a big deal for sure, and everybody knows that. How are we coming out now we can take a look at the numbers hospitalization, which we have on USA Facts hospitalization cases, deaths. The death rate is down quite dramatically, and that's an adjective, but if you look at it today, I think it's roughly three odd people plus or minus

that are dying every day. And I'm not saying that's a trivial number, but I will say in my own case, I've gone from being super super careful about COVID to just being careful. And the numbers do influence the way I think about this. That's the thing. Though this has impacted people's worldview. It's hard to to measure that with numbers. It is in the short run, and it's not in the long run. So well, in the long run, we're gonna see are we driving the same number of miles

that we did pre COVID. We're gonna see what's going on with commercial office space. Is it the same. We're gonna see whether we're producing the same level of of c O two or will things because of the change in the structure of the economy. Will that influence emissions? We will say, see what happens with wages. We will

see which sectors of the economy generate more jobs. I mean, there actually been an interesting transformation if you take a look at jobs and job openings, you know, out of some sectors and into warehousing and transportation logistics, it's been a huge grower. And if you stop and say, okay, that matches my mental model, we're in the Amazon uber eats generation because of the pandemic. It makes sense. You're talking about measuring our behavior though, right, kind of getting

a sense of what we're doing with our day. It's hard to it's hard to measure someone's own perception of their more mentality. Yes I can't. I can't dispute that, But let me even take that one on just a little bit, just a little bit. Life expectancy. We don't like forecasts. We don't do forecast understood at USA facts. Life expectancy is actually a forecast and kind of a wild forecast. We had a pandemic last year. The life expectancy comes down below almost two years. But that's where

somebody born today. Are we going to have another pandemic in the next seventy two years. I don't know how the numbers are done. I think they're done professionally. The thing we can look at is the average age at which people die. And if you're thinking, I'm sixty six years old, average person in America pre pandemic, I don't know. The number off the top of my head would be seventy two points something or seventy three approximately. I'm sixty

six years old. Now I have to remember that I'm not necessarily going to die at the average age of death. With with that said, that probably represents my here and now. The thing that's going to get into my psyche is how long do I have? At least it gets into my say, which allows you to plan around uh. I would like to ask you a little bit more about

what's happening in the economy right now. The issue of inflation is overwhelming just about everything else on people's minds, and it's become a big political football here in Washington. If people lost sight of reality when it comes to this, the ability that politicians in Washington have to influence the economy and prices specifically, are people asking for the impossible? Well, there's plenty of data that will give you perspective on this. The thing I encourage people to look at is chart

what's going on with GDP. Chart what's going on with interest rates? We have it all all USA facts dot org. Look at what's happened for long term investment in our economy through capital expenditures and R and D not just by government but by private industry, and then ask yourself which things are consistent no matter what government does? Is R and D expenditure pretty consistent? The answer, by the

way to that one is yes, are some things wild swingers? Yeah, there's some things that are wild swingers, whether it's employment or income. Many of them do correlate with a government action. I mean, you could see them on a chart, and they're not all positive correlation. You know. I think many people are very thankful for government response to the pandemic, and yet somebody can look at that and say, huh, I wonder if government response to the pandemic had anything

to do with the current situation that we're in. It's it's a hotly debated topic. You're not going to try to give causality. But when people wake up every morning and say, well, damn it, Joe Biden, how come you haven't fixed this since yesterday? Or the Federal Reserve, when is this going to be done? There's only so much perfect Washington can do. Perhaps it's because you know, I'm very have been fortunate and very well off. My read is the government responds often triggers a positive and a

negative reaction. And if you go back and take a look at what happened before two USA facts, go look at it. I think you'll find some interesting things that happened. And then we went way up and then we came way down. Same thing before two thousand, the dot com bubble, and early two thousands same thing. You know, we had the pandemic, and obviously we needed to come out, but man, did we come out too strong? Well, you know, as you should. Should Washington do more? Or are we better off?

In some cases letting um, I'll just say the markets and are currently take care of things. And I'm not saying government shouldn't do anything. I think of government in some senses that the insurance company of last resort. It sounds like you see an impact, it just might not always be a good one. Correct, correct, And there are times it makes perfect sense in the pandemic, at least at some level, for the government to step in made sense.

The levels of the question, yeah, the levels the question infrastructure bill, Yeah, if you actually look at the numbers as as presented by the Department of Transportation, guess what. Our roads and bridges have been improving slowly but steadily with the level of expenditure that existed pre the Infrastructure Bill. In fact, most of the money gets spent anyway by state and local government. Did we need an additional dose of money? I just posed it as a question. You

mentioned two thousand one dot com. There's been a lot of comparisons in this market downturn recently. Do you see parallels? Are we in just a different world right now? We are in a well, if you just look at the context, we're in a different world. We're in a different interest rate environment, which I think is is very important, different profitability environment, a different profitability different uh are in terms of deficit spending, which has its own characteristics in terms

of driving markets, driving inflation. So you don't feel that despair that you may have back then. Ironically, as CEO of Microsoft at the time, I did not feel despair. I felt opportunity because while everybody else was running for the hills in the tech industry saying the world's a disaster, I saw that as a time for us to double

down and invest uh and build talent. Now we had people who were panicky, but we could take care of that in terms of what we did for people with compensation, so that one it wasn't a broader it was a less broad economic hit. I want to ask you about Washington's relationship with high tech, because loving to hate big tech has become a hobby for both Democrats and Republicans, but for different reasons. It's it's actually fascinated to me. Progressives think big tech is too big, what, too big

to fail? Whatever, it might be too influential. Conservatives say their voices are being censored. As someone with firsthand experience though dealing with antitrust at Microsoft, are we about to enter a new period based on the legislation we're seeing of government cracking down on big tech. I could worry about that a lot, a lot, a lot, and now we're sort of past USA facts. I'll just give you

my opinion. The great productivity improvement in our economy not growth in people, not inflation, but the key driver of GDP is productivity growth. My opinion, my reading would say the great driver if that has been technology, and nobody should want to slow down the innovation that comes from technology. There's a role in the technical technology business for startups. They change things. But there are also things that you can only do if you have large R and D

budgets like Microsoft, Google, Apple, etcetera. So those are important things. Now are there things where it's appropriate for government to take a look and say, hey, something should change? I believe that. I think part of the problem the way that happens oftentimes those government wants to vilify the tech I felt vilified when we got hit with an anti trust loss it. The truth is, we ran our business, we ran it well, and then somebody did decide we

should change our practice. Not that it was evil, but that wasn't the communication in the big tech world of today, I think people are getting vilified as opposed to appropriately regulated. And oh, by the way, I think regulations should come from um the agencies as opposed to the Congress, because there's a lot of nuance. If you say, hey, what can you express or not express on Twitter or Facebook? The truth of the matter is deciding those issues as

a matter of policy. There's complicated questions and you want real experts on the government side in a issue to the tech side. To figure those things out. So do I worry about where things are going? Yeah? I worry about R and D spending. I know we could slow these tech companies down in ways we don't intend. It's okay if there are ways in which we really intend through regulation, but I have a lot of concern about it. As a majority shareholder of of Microsoft, I'm assuming you

still are. Do you worry then about the government stepping in on this Activision acquisition? Is that still a good idea in your view? I think the Activision and I've said this to management team, I'm I'm excited about the Activision acquisition. They want to do. They do need to get through the heart Scot Rodino process. And you see Elizabeth Warren sending out tweets about it, and you start

to wonder. But yes, and no, there's a reason why we have independent review and a Justice Department an FTC that reviewed these kinds of transactions. They are not political decisions. And you could say, hey, and some administrations things go a little more this way, a little bit more that way, which is true, but these are generally very high integrity people who are trying to make the right decision for for consumers. And businesses. Do you see it going through that?

I can't predict. I'm not close enough to the situation. I'll just keep my fingers crossed. What do you do for fun? Do you play an Xbox? No, my kids are all gamers. I am not. I am not a gamer. I will confession. People have very simple questions about someone with your level of success. What do you do for fun? And by the way, what are you doing here? You could be on an island right now for fun. For me, um, the most fun thing I did for most of my life, for much of my life was go to my kids

sporting events. My kids are all grown now, they go to your sporting exactly. Going to Clipper games is the most fun thing I do. I mean, I play golf and I exercise a variety of other things. But it is just such a rush. Not not quite as good as your kids games. There's nothing quite like about the emotion and tied to that. But but being chairman of the Clippers, you know, that's as they said, that's the

best thing to being there. Steve Balmber, thank you for bringing us the data USA facts and for your insights today on Bloomberg. Thanks a lot appreciate it. Fascinating conversation you will only here on Bloomberg. Of course, speaking of inflation, which we spent a little bit of time on, Charlie Pellett mentioned this earlier, a new plan to fight inflation

being prepared by the White House and Congressional Democrats. This just broke a short time ago, as I read on the terminal advanced talks underway on a package that would likely include capping the price of insulin. You've heard of these, at least individually proposed already in investments in both clean energy and fossil fuels that, according to our White House team talking with sources and agreement they say, could emerge as soon as next week. So next week could be

another doozy. The January six Committee, of course, resumes hearings next week as well. And coming up, we're gonna take a look at how this is playing before audiences, of course, in our splintered media universe aforementioned, we're gonna get into it with Bloomberg media reporter Jerry Smith check traffic and markets on the way. Thanks for spending some time with

us on a Friday. It's sound on and this is Bloomberg two more hearings are set for next week for the Select Committee investigating the attack on the Capitol of January six. As it went from prime time last week to daytime this week, and we've been taking a look at the ratings and getting a sense of how much of an impact this might be having. People have been

trying to compare it to Watergate. Of course, uh, you know, I ran contra think of the hearings that you know have images burned in your brain that actually drew people to their TV sets. Now there's a lot more than TV. This is playing across Twitter and Facebook, social media and everywhere else, chopped up in bits, and it's consumed in different ways, which is why we wanted to talk about this with Bloomberg Media reporter Jerry Smith. Jerry, thanks for

being with us. Let's start with what we know in terms of TV ratings. I remember twenty million was the number for the primetime debut. Where did it go from there? So the second hearing earlier this week got about eleven million viewers, so it was a decline from the first hearing. But you know, it's important to note that it was the first hearing was in prime time and the second

hearing started at at ten am in the morning. A lot of people are at work, so I mean that that has to have factored into the ratings being lower. And of course a lot of people are watching at work, and that's I guess that's the interesting part now of capturing ratings and that this is the deal for all traditional media because you're cannibalized to some extent or maybe to a great extent by internet viewing people. There's streaming it on Twitter on platforms that I don't know or

how how do these all get recognized? Right? The way that we measure TV audiences, uh, is much more complicated than it was for the Watergate hearings, where it was just a few channels. I mean, people are streaming this and there's not really a good way to count all

those eyeballs across TV and streaming. UM. So it's it's an imperfect number that we're getting, but it is directionally shows you how it's going to be a challenge for this here, this committee to to continue after the first hearing where they got twenty million viewers, which is a pretty good number, you know, continue to draw that that that audience for a congressional hearing it's a really good number. Of course, to your point, I mean I said there

was an unsuspecting audience there. My gosh. You put it on every network since Fox at eight o'clock and a lot of people are gonna end up watching it. I'm sure many intentional, but putting the context for us, uh, if you can, Jerry, I mean, I guess against big speeches State of the Union, maybe political conventions, what does

twenty million mean for politics? Well, I mean it's going to be less than your state of the State of Union addraft and it's going to be less than you know, speeches where presidential candidates have accepted the nomination during the conventions. But you know, it's right up there, pretty close to um, you know the Bob Muller hearings that that got a lot of attention. UM. So you know, eleven million, twenty million, it's it's much larger than you're going to get for

most you know, entertainment television shows on TV these days. Yeah, right, absolutely. The State of the Union this time around in two had thirty two million, which was a drop of two million from UH when Joe Biden was first talking to Congress. It's interesting to look at the just the comparison here, you know, whether this was the Oscars of politics or not. Did you think they can duplicate that debut audience on the last night because it goes back to prime time

for the last full smash hear ring. I think it's gonna be challenging. I think there was a lot of excitement and build up to the first hearing UM and you know, now we've had several hearings and and it's possible that people have felt like they're getting a little fatigued by it. UM. So that's a real challenge for the hearing, the committee, and they're doing their best. I mean they um, they're trying to really slickly produce these hearings.

UM there. It's not like the typical hearing where people are you know, you're getting the raw footage and people are going on and on when they're answering questions. I mean, a lot of these UM sound bites have been edited down. These are video testimony in a lot of cases that have been edited to really the most um, you know,

important sound bites. And they're even trying to tease what they're going to have in the next hearing at the end of the hearing to kind of almost as if a TV show saying, you know, next yeah, stay tuned for the next episode, that that sort of thing. So they're doing the best they can to keep Americans engaged. Yeah,

they literally have been. Uh it's been interesting to to consider the impact that that's this former president of ABC News, that's they've they've hired Republicans have tried to make a thing out of this, the impact that he's had on the production values here. Um, you're a media reporter, you do this for a living. What do you make of the optics of it so far? Is that actually having an impact? We've also had some, you know, pretty dry

opening statements. We've had some very cautious testimony in some cases. How does this play to someone who's used to watch in Law and Order at eight o'clock? You know, I mean, it's it's a good question, and I think that it's um, you know, it's it's just it's very different than your typical hearing, and it is more engaging than your typical hearing. And that is something that the House Committee has really

tried to do. I mean, they really spent a lot of time with their investigation, and they want They don't want it to fall on deaf ears. They want to keep people entertained and engaged to UM. So, you know, it remains to be seen whether all the networks are going to carry all the hearings. I was going to ask you that we don't know that about the final

night either, do we. We don't know. I mean Fox News got a lot of criticism for not carrying the first hearing in prime time and instead they chose to stick with their typical lineup of you know, Sean Hannity and Tucker Carlson. They did air the second hearing, but we don't know whether they're going to continue, and their audience UM is certainly UM. You know, they're catering to a Republican audience that UM maybe doesn't want to hear

some of the findings. So it's UM. You know, all the most of the other networks are carrying it, but UM and and people are watching online. I just think when you have so many hearings, it's difficult to keep people engaged. You find yourself watching it in sort of long form on TV. Are you are you consuming it in chunks on social media? Well, I mean that's that's an excellent point. I just think this whole media landscape is so different, and it's not just hearings, but but everything.

I mean, even sports, um, and certainly cable news. Is a lot of people are just going through Facebook and Twitter and getting a little video clips um that people have edited, um oftentimes edited in such a way that that confirmed their political beliefs. So that's the media landscape that we live in. It's a far cry from around

Contra hearings or the Watergate hearings. It's just a very different world we live in now where people can kind of create their own media world when there were three channels. It certainly brings us back to our conversation earlier this hour with Steve Palmer. Jerry, it's great to have you with us. I appreciate your insights. Jerry Smith, Bloomberg media reporter with us on Bloomberg Sound On. I'm Joe, Matthew and Washington. You made it to Friday and glad you're

here on the fastest hour in politics. As we turned to something that actually got done, you could consider on Capitol Hill, a D and an R. Two lawmakers in an interesting approach towards solving the problem of inflation. And it starts with the shipping going into our ports. It's coming up next. We'll check traffic and the markets for you too, if you dare. Charlie Pellett will have an update next. This is Bloomberg. This is Bloomberg. Sound on

on Bloomberg Radio. The White House and Democrats in Congress are making progress on a new plan to fight inflation. As we're reading on the terminal. We told you earlier this hour a breaker here, a bill they say could emerge next week. This would follow what the President signed in the law this week, an actual bipartisan piece of legislation aimed at lowering inflation by way of our ports.

You heard the President call out the five big shipping companies last week in a speech at the Port of l A. The new ocean shipping law cracks down on price, increases, increases transparency, they say. And we're joined by a Democrat and a Republican who helped to make the legislation happen, Representative John Garamendi, Democrat from California, and Congressman Dusty Johnson, Republican South Dakota. Welcome to Bloomberg. Thanks for avais could be with you. I want to start with some numbers.

Three sixty nine to forty two, a rare bipartisan win these days. In Washington. Congressman Johnson, I thought Democrats and Republicans were not allowed to work together. How did it happen? Well, there are a few people in Washington who are interested in solving problems rather than just complaining about them. And uh, John Garamendy and I are both people actually care about

getting stuff done. And when you have a problem as big as the supply chain crunch and you get hard working people and hard working staff, yes, actually you can't get some things done in Washington. Still, Congressman Garamendy, how did it get done? It took several swings at the

ball before you got that nice bipartisan win. Well, first of all, there was a serious problem, a very very serious problem facing agriculture in my district and Dusty and own district, and so that gave us the impetus were representatives were supposed to be dealing with the problems that our constituents has, And so we started working on it. And as we began putting together the legislation, well, first understanding what the problem was, where it was coming from,

and then figuring out what to do about it. We discovered that it wasn't just agriculture. This is a problem that was facing the entire American economy, at least that portion of it that exports goods all around the world. And so we wound up with Amazon and Walmart and home Depot and the retail industry and agriculture and on and on saying, hey, we put part of this, we want to be part of this because we're looking for a solution to our problem. And that's where where it grew.

And ultimately that led to the bipartisan uh. And I would say the entire American economy except uh, the ocean shippers. They didn't think much of this piece of legislation, but they were. I'll be curious to hear a little more about that, because we spent the last year here at Bloomberg talking about supply chain and inflation, probably more than any two single issues, and of course they cross over here.

They certainly do in your bill, Congressman Johnson. It was written out of a need, as you've both expressed here, and a big shift in shipping following the pandemic. When do we see implementation and maybe a better question alleviation on the supply chain. Is this a long term fix or can we see something soon? Well, this is something we've needed for a long time. You know, pandemic really laid there the problem. But the problem has been there

for a while. The reality is that all of the large ocean carriers that take American goods to Asia are foreign flag and the five biggest of these carriers control seventy year sev the market. And I believe in the free market, but the free book market is many buyers and many sellers, and in that way, people can keep each other on us. That is not what you have in this ocean carrier industry. And as a result, they were in a position where they could discriminate against American goods,

and that's exactly what they were doing. Last year, six of the containers that went back to Asia went back empty. At a time that we're in American agricultural goods were literally rotting on the ports. So your question about how quickly will this get fixed? I talked to the chairman of the Federal Maritime Commission. These are the cops on the beat that we've given the new authority to. They've

said that things have already gotten better. That just the fact that Congress spoke with one voice, with strong bipartisan support, put these folks on notice that if they step out of line, if they don't play by some basic rules of the road, there are going to be they're going to be held accountable. And so things have already gotten better. But I think over the course of the next year, as the Federal Maritime Commission completes their rulemaking, you're going

to see things progress even further. Congressman Garamendi, this legislation bars these ocean carriers were talking about from from declining opportunities for U S exports to to Congressman Johnson's point, going back to port empty. That's something that can take effect now. But can it also increase congestion at our ports.

Probably not. Uh. The problem of port congestion had to do with the really the shutdown of the of the world economy and then the rapid reopening of it, and then the surge of imports into the United States from the Asian countries because of the tent up demand and the u and also the the amount of goods that were available to be shipped. That was the initial cause

of the congestion. But that congestion also is one of the factors in the current inflation problem, the cost of because there is such a demand in the Pacific countries to import into the United States that allowed the ocean shippers to take advantage of that demand and the concentration that Dusty just mentioned where there wasn't no other competition, So the cost went up tenfold at at minimum at least tenfold for the importation for the cost of importing,

and that cost was directly passed on to American consumers in what we now call inflation. So I think I understand how you're both going to answer this with With that said, but I wonder if you agree with what President Biden has been saying and just just as recently in your state, Congressman Garamandi at the Port of l A about a week ago, that the marketplace manipulation is partly the blame and and monopolization for the backlog, that there is in fact some gouging going on here. Do

you both see it that way? First off, I would know that we know that this is not a silver bullet. I mean, some of this inflation is natural, uh, you know, particularly as it relates to products coming into this country. There's a tremendous amount of demand for consumer electronics from Asia, and so if you don't have enough slots on a ship, how do you figure out how do your ration that access? And so you do understand white prices would go up

as you go from Asia to America. It made a lot less sense as as it was related to how do you get products from America over over to Asia where people have purchased them. That did not seem to make as much economic sense. And frankly, our bill, you asked John if it was going to make the congestion worse, it's not because right now we've got all these American egg products. They're on the port there in the way, they're making it harder to get products in and out.

Getting those American egg products back out to the customers that want to buy them, he is actually going to make the whole to run a lot better. The foreign flagged ocean carriers, it's not their job to do to make their decisions on the basis of what is right for America. Sure, that's Congress's job. And so these guys

are going to increase rates. When they can increase rates, they're gonna treat American companies poorly, and when we see these abuses, it's our job, It's Dusty Johnson's jobs, John Garamendi's job to step up and say, wait a second, what's the appropriate regulatory regime here to make sure that if you're going to show up and use American ports, that you have to play by some basic rules of the road. That's why this was such a big bipartisan success. Sure,

I asked about congestion, just out of curiosity. Does it cause ships to wait to refill instead of you know, getting out of the port and heading back empty, if that creates a wait time? And I also wonder about the ground aspect of this. Some of the reaction that we heard from the carriers UH suggested that we needed to do more for for our are landborn shipping process here as well, because we've seen obviously trucks lining up even after the President brought the ports on the West coast.

Congressman Garamendi, how tight is that situation now trying to find drivers trying to move goods once they get to the port. Well, Dusty hit part of this, and that is if you're if you have agricultural exports that are waiting to be shipped. You now have congestion at the dock. The more of those containers that get on the ship and go back to Asia, the less congestion there will

be on the dock. Uh. The other piece of this issue is that there's a very powerful economic incentive for the ocean shippers to get that container, that empty container back to the Western Pacific, back to China, Japan, wherever, because they are able to get perhaps ten times more payment from the China exporter and they would get from

the American exporter. That empty container can be turned around very very quickly in China, but if it's full of American exports, it would probably take two or three weeks and maybe even a month before the empty containers ready to be put back on the ship. That's very helpful information. Lastly, Congressman Johnson, your thought on that as we heard the reaction from the World Shipping Council that America needs to make the same commitment to invest in its landside logistics infrastructure.

What do we need to do on our end? Well, yeah, the ports are not the only problem. We're eighty thousand truck drivers short in this country. There's a lot we can do there you know, and just recently we've it's gotten harder to get a cd L, and I think we probably want to make sure we're right sizing that safety and regulatory regime. And and we also have a lot of young drivers, I mean people who have driven

tanks for Uncle Sam. They can drive up and down the coast to California all week long, but they can't go from Kelly Forny, Arizona until their twenty one. There's a pilot project that is going to make it easier for some younger drivers, younger drivers. Would you guys both collaborate on a trucker's bill, a driver's bill? Well, listen, if it's going to move the ball forward. Yeah, I mean that's the kind of thing that I think you're gonna be Team garam Eddy and team Johnson worked together on.

Because this is not a one off. We want to continue to work to make things better. I'mus for Garamendi and Johnson. We thank you for being here together. I'm Joe, Matthew and Washington. See you next week. This is Bloomberg