The maritime industry and stockholders got more hope for improvment on sectors. As the American people voted for whom to become the next president. A process, which took few days later after counting the votes, Joe Biden and Kamala Harris who run under Democratic party was declared the winner of the election.
Meanwhile the incumbent president Donald Trump who run under Republican Party refuses to concede, said the election was fraud and manipulated. While the legal actions and investigations are ongoing, the transition of power processes are yet to start as published by The New York Times .
However, as Joe Biden and Kamala Harris the President-elect and Vice President-elect prepare to take over the White House on 20th January 2021 after their success over Donald Trump in the US election, maritime stakeholders are waiting and hoping for the incoming administration to help fix some major maritime challenges facing the marine industries, which includes:
- Working on exclusions of the maritime industry from one of trump coronavirus relief packages, which leave maritime stakeholders empty handed and struggling for financial support.
- change and Clarifying the future of the Federal Maritime Commission, to change the characters of the independent federal agency overlooking regulation of the US’s ocean Bourne international transportation.
- More port development in major areas where it’s required. Which will Continue Trump administration significant contributions to local ports to drive in more investments in local ports as it was on the shipbuilding sector
- Improve and add more funding for the shipbuilding sectors. That which will also create more jobs, meet up with demands and boost the country’s economy.
Maritime industry setbacks caused by Covid-19
Apart from the above listed, the covid-19 has been one of the major challenges, which Biden and Harris has promised to address as soon as they took over the white house. The new development on finding treatment or prevention of the virus has increased more hope that the challenge will soon be over. After Pfizer and BioNTech tweeted with some good news on the 9th of November which indicated that their vaccine are 90% effective, while awaiting approval.
As Jeff Vogel stated on an article published by Ship Technology “Marine industry needs some further support and some form of relief to compensate the economic challenges that we’ve seen in 2020 as a result of the Covid-19 and economic downturn,” says Jeff Vogel.
He also pointed out that “the sector has been going along with reduced cargo demand and increased operational costs from the need to provide personal protective equipment (PPE) to their ship crew members and dealing with a new operating environment too”.
If the incoming administration will work more on the listed challenges, this will significantly boost international trade with the United States and fix more damages to sub-sectors around it.