Chertoff supports industry's arguments against

Published 13 March 2006

Last week we reported that the maritime and transportation industries were saying that new port security measures contemplated by Congress (there are now eleven different port and infrastructure security bills in different stages of writing making their way through the congressional process) were “draconian,” and would hobble international commerce and U.S. economic well-being. DHS secretary Michael Chertoff appeared last week to be lending support to that view. He said that the emotional response of American lawmakers to Dubai’s acquisition of U.S. port terminals threatens to damage the country’s economy. Chertoff stressed that the administration had to focus on “intelligent security” in a way that “doesn’t burn down the village in order to save it.” He added that Congress underestimated the progress made by the Bush administration in promoting port security. “We do not want a regime in which we are so focused on risk to the exclusion of all else that we lock everything down and we destroy our country,” he told the Financial Times.

Lawmakers argue that all cargo containers entering the United States should be inspected, but Chertoff said such a move would be “tantamount to shutting the ports down”. “If I were in the shipping industry, the maritime industry, the cargo industry, I would be concerned about measures that would strangle business and put workers out of work in this country.”

-read more in this Financial Times report