Vice-President Joe Biden told attendees to the annual convention of the American Association of Port Authorities in Houston that the United States is the most innovative country in the world. That's because it has the greatest research universities, the most high-tech manufacturing, and is responsible for two-third's of the world's venture capital investment.
"Over the last five years, American manufacturing has added 728,000 new jobs, the fastest rates since 1990. Manufacturing and manufacturers are coming home," Biden said.
Vice-President Joe Biden/Photo courtesy The White House.
But he says the nation's transportation infrastructure is ranked 28th, an unacceptable number for the world's leading economy.
"The U.S. transportation system moves 52 tons of goods worth $46 billion each day, and is expected to increase by 62-percent by 2040," the vice-president said. "That's gonna require additional capacity for our highways, rails, ports, multi-modal connection."
Biden says the country needs to make sure its whole infrastructure system is connected.
"That's why in the midst of the great recession, we invested $48 billion in the Recovery Act," he said. "We improved over 6,000 miles of rail, 350,000 miles of roads, 20,000 bridges, created hundreds of thousands of good paying jobs."
The Vice-President says the bottom line is that the greatest economic power in the world, needs the most dynamic port system in the world, in order to generate more commrece, trade and income for the American people.
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