INVESTING IN AMERICA: During Visits in Michigan and Wisconsin, Secretary Buttigieg Highlights Midwest Ports as Engines of the U.S. Economy and Key Links in Our Supply Chains

Secretary Pete Buttigieg toured the new DeLong agriculture export facility at Port Milwaukee, recently awarded a $9 million grant from President Biden's Bipartisan Infrastructure Law to help move more goods around the U.S. and the world

Milwaukee, WI - This week U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg traveled across Wisconsin and Michigan's Upper Peninsula to visit three Great Lakes ports to learn about operations and hear from those on the frontlines of our supply chains, highlight how the ports fuel both the local and national economy, and learn how they will benefit from investments from President Biden's infrastructure law. More than 450 port and waterways projects are underway to strengthen supply chain reliability, speed up the movement of goods, reduce costs, and reduce air pollution, all thanks to the Biden-Harris Administration's Investing in America agenda.

Stop 1: Menominee Harbor, MI: Located near the border of Wisconsin and Michigan's Upper Peninsula, this smaller port received a $21 million investment from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law in June to reconstruct deteriorating port infrastructure and increase rail capacity, allowing for faster movement of goods and less air pollution from trucks going in and out of the facility. 

Stop 2: Port of Manitowoc, WI: The Port of Manitowoc serves as a key node in American manufacturing, and the Secretary heard from terminal operators about the production of large cranes that are used by the U.S. Navy, the fabrication of steel used in some of the most critical sectors of the economy, and help moving the malt used to brew many iconic Wisconsin beers. 

Stop 3: Port Milwaukee, WI: Last year, Port Milwaukee received over $9 million from the Bipartisan Infrastructure law to upgrade its agricultural export facilities to allow to ship more grain from Wisconsin farmers even faster. The Secretary heard directly from growers and producers about the positive impact this facility-and investments in our roads, bridges, rail and more-- has on their operations. 

The full transcript of Secretary Buttigieg's remarks at Port Milwaukee:   

Thanks so much Jeff [Becton] for the kind introduction. And thank you for all of the workers you represent. We are so proud to support the ILA workers and other port workers who make it possible for us to get the goods that we count on. And of course, we're proud to be supporting the workers in the building and construction trades. We're seeing so much construction work and manufacturing workers, especially here in the Midwest benefiting through the President's Investing in America agenda.

The Mayor mentioned a few more acknowledgements that he would like to make so let me reinvite him to the podium for a moment to acknowledge some others who are here with us.

(Milwaukee Mayor Cavalier Johnso Speaks)

Thanks, and of course I echo the Mayor's appreciation and acknowledgment for those who are joining us for everything that you do. And I so appreciate the Mayor for the excellent leadership that he has provided. For everything that has been happening in Milwaukee. This is already a city that was on the map, but on the map in the best way. Through many of the choices and initiatives that he has led. And we seek to be a partner to America's great cities and America's great mayors.

I often reflect that the job of a mayor has only become more demanding and more difficult since I proudly wore that title. But it would have been nice back when I was mayor if there was a trillion-dollar infrastructure bill coming out of the administration. So hopefully, you feel that wind at your back.

Thank you to Director [Jackie] Carter for welcoming us to the port. For your excellent work and your trailblazing example. We are proud to be with you and so impressed by what your staff are doing.

I also want to thank the people of Milwaukee for their understanding when we stole your great port director. We're so proud to have Adam Tindall-Schlict leading the GLS (Great Lakes Saint Lawrence Seaway Administration) which is of importance of course to the entire American economy, as well as - in particular - to America's Great Lakes ports - and he is laser focused on that.

I thank Secretary [Randy] Romansky. We had an excellent conversation earlier with some of the Ag growers, businesses, and exporters here. I appreciate all that you're doing. We should compare notes on consumer protection a bit later too since that's a favorite subject of mine. And I really enjoyed my conversation with the Governor preparing for this trip, who I'll see soon.

I just want to thank everybody here for the warm welcome and say how proud we are to be here. These last few weeks we've been highlighting a lot of the construction going on - in the infrastructure moment that we live in thanks to the President's Investing in America initiative. So, I've had a lot of dust on my shoes, but this is the first time that I've had grain dust on my jacket. It feels pretty good.

And of course, it's personally rewarding to be back here as well. I am very much a creature of the Great Lakes. I grew up in Northern Indiana, there on the business end of the lake effect. I drilled at Great Lakes and Fort Sheridan, in Chicago, the city that brought me and my husband together. And I should mention that he went to school at Eau Claire and is very nostalgic about his days living and working in Milwaukee. And we now live in Northern Michigan where he grew up, so anything that affects the Great Lakes is close to my heart. And that is part of why we wanted to make sure we were out here visiting the extraordinary ports.

And if one thing I've learned over the years, growing up in the Midwest, serving as mayor and certainly now Secretary, is how much the life and the economy of the Midwest and the Great Lakes region has to do with the ability to move things. The railroads that moved our supplies and manufactured goods, the roads that linked this part of the country to the East, and of course the lakes themselves and the rivers that link into them gave rise to so many of our Midwestern communities. Going back to the earliest days of America's recorded history. And it was on the strength of these waters and their potential, that this region became an economic powerhouse for the entire country - an engine of growth, especially for America's manufacturing and agriculture economies, and with that the rise of the American middle-class.

The strength of American agriculture, manufacturing, and our middle-class continues to be an economic engine and a source of rightful pride in this part of the country. But of course, there is another piece of that story - which is the consequences of decades of decisions that contributed to the squeeze on family farmers, the loss of some of our great manufacturing jobs, and a new vulnerability in that middle class that stood so strong for so long.

Those losses and those pressures didn't happen at random or because of an act of God. They happened because through the decades, Washington too often failed to prioritize the well-being of our heartland farmers and our Great Lakes manufacturers.

The Biden-Harris Administration arrived with a determination to change all that, and under the President's leadership we have made good on that determination. We have made good on it with a new industrial policy to bring manufacturing back to our shores, a new labor policy to empower American workers, and of course, a new infrastructure policy that has the federal government putting its money where its mouth is for the first time in a long time.

American communities and companies here are growing, innovating, exporting, and the Biden-Harris Administration is backing these communities with the support, the policies, the partnership - and, importantly the funding that was needed for so long. And we've done that in partnership with an amazing federal delegation. Leaders like Gwen Moore, like Tammy Baldwin who were with us, believed in us back when the commentators were saying we'd never get an infrastructure law, certainly not a bipartisan one. They didn't give up, the President didn't give up, and neither did we. And now we're here because of it.

We are making investments that support good jobs in Milwaukee and across the Midwest. Partnering with states and communities to bring out the best in our proud tradition and history with a focus on a better future.

And this week I've been seeing great examples of that.

This new agricultural maritime export facility that opened just last summer is already helping farmers from across the heartland sell their product around the world.

I just had a chance to see it for myself. I saw how farmers can now export commodities that are not well-suited for container shipping and upright storage, which was the only option before.

That's why, in partnership with the DeLong Company, the State of Wisconsin, and the City of Milwaukee, the Biden-Harris Administration was so proud to award $9 million for phase II of this project. That means the chance to expand the capacity by more than 1.3 million bushels a year, so that more American farmers can sell their excellent products to the world through this port.

In fact, the ship we have right next to us is loading distillers dried grains with solubles, a byproduct of ethanol, from farmers in Wisconsin, Minnesota, and Iowa, on its way to be sold in Northern Europe.

I love stories like this, because so many Americans, when they think about ports and supplies chains, they picture those ocean ports on our coasts, where we are importing products from Asia. And that's a very important part of our economy. But what we love best is to see opportunities to sell our products to the rest of the world and to bring that income to our workers, and to our farmers, and to our communities, right here in America's heartland, and right here across the United States.

And again, we're seeing success stories like this across the region. Yesterday, I was at the Port of Menominee, at the base of the UP, where we're helping reconstruct a crumbling dock wall and installing new rail capacity, and doing it all through funding in that Bipartisan Infrastructure Law.

Last year, I was in Monroe, Michigan, where we're using funds from that same Biden-Harris infrastructure package to help the port expand capacity and build an overpass over a freight rail line, so people and goods can move more safely and efficiently.

This list goes on, with thousands of projects moving forward across the Midwest, like the vitally important new Blatnik Bridge we're building between Superior, Wisconsin and Duluth. And for every bridge with a billion-dollar project like that, there are hundreds of rural off system bridges that we're supporting too.

These are the kinds of investments that America made in our best moments - should never have stopped making - and we're making now, not a moment too soon. And I'm so proud of how people across the Great Lakes, often working with generations-old infrastructure, have kept the fires lit, have kept these communities going. And now, at last, we are bringing the support these communities have long deserved.

This administration, as I mentioned, was so proud to have passed and signed the biggest infrastructure package in more than 70 years, and those investments are now helping American farmers and American manufacturing workers thrive. It's already paying off.

No more so-called "infrastructure weeks" with no results in Washington, and enough of the big factory announcements that never led to anything. Under President Biden and Vice President Harris, the U.S. has created nearly 800,000 manufacturing jobs, a remarkable comeback compared to the manufacturing recession that we experienced under the previous administration.

In a couple of days, I'll be in Kokomo, Indiana, seeing the new electric vehicle battery factories that are being built there. We're seeing manufacturing jobs coming back to the U.S., at new auto plants in Indiana, Kansas, Michigan, Ohio, and more.

This really is the start of a new and better era for America's heartland. And it's not happening by chance. The infrastructure improvements and supply chain investments and pro-manufacturing policies of this administration are driving this American renaissance, including our awards earlier this month, through the Department of Energy to breathe new life into 11 at-risk or shuttered factories, that now see new life and purpose in the EV economy.

I'll just make one final observation. Which is that, while we are drawing inspiration from a proud tradition and history. We're also learning from our past, and we're not doing things exactly as we did them last time.

For example, we are serious about making sure that industrial growth for the future does not mean the same kind of impact on the environment, including our rivers and lakes that we experienced in the past. This time, we are demonstrating how job growth need not come at the expense of environmental responsibility, nor vice versa. The clean energy and manufacturing jobs we are supporting here have shattered the old, false framework of jobs versus the environment and proven that we can do things here in the early 21st century that will do right by those among us, like my own kids, who will go on to experience the 22nd century. Here too, many of the best examples come from the Great Lakes and the Midwest.

At the Port of Manitowoc, where I was yesterday, we're helping convert the Badger, the last coal-powered freight and passenger ferry in the entire U.S., to a cleaner way of running and across the country we are working on opportunities that are going to make a difference.

This administration and our partners are also investing $450 million to clean up about two million cubic yards of contaminated sediment from the Milwaukee Estuary Area of Concern, which will make communities here healthier and help revitalize the local waterfront economy.

So, farmers across the Midwest are making a good living growing crops for ethanol and biofuels, the byproducts of which can now be exported around the world through this very port while American manufacturing workers are making a good living building EVs and their components in the Great Lakes instead in place like Guangzhou, in China.

I know I've covered a lot of ground, so I'll just sum it up in one sentence: This is what America's infrastructure, agriculture, and manufacturing comeback looks like. We are so proud that fixing bridges, ports, highways, railroads, and more, is contributing to better incomes for American farmers and manufacturing workers, lower costs for American families, and cleaner air and water for our children.

And of course, the work is not done - we are still in the first half of America's infrastructure decade, and we are reversing literally decades of underinvestment, including in the Midwest - but we are well underway. Dollars are moving, dirt is flying and project by project, community by community, we are laying groundwork for a great future, and I am proud to be your partner in building that better future. So, thank you for welcoming us here in Milwaukee - we're thrilled to be here with you .

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