DC Velocity - February 2009

thoughtleaders BRUCE CARLTON

success.” So I worked at that, and I worked at the dismal science, and I am pleased that for me personally, it worked out very nicely.

It would be the same advice I would give young people today. I think that developing basic, essential analytical skills, where you challenge a thesis or a proposition and test it and apply data and reasoning against it, is essential for anyone in any profession. I’m not saying that everyone should study economics or business or a hard science, but I am suggesting that it’s important for students to have some exposure to those fields and their analytical methodology so that they can apply it later on in their careers.

QLet’s go back to your tenure at MarAd and how things developed from there.

ABeginning in the mid 1990s, my career shifted heavily

toward the international arena. I had taken over as one of several associate administrators at the Maritime Administration. I began doing a lot of work in the international transportation arena.

As part of that, I had the opportunity to do face-to-face, head-to-head negotiations of market opening agreements in Russia, China, Brazil, and Vietnam, countries that were, if not closed to American business, at least creating very high barriers to entry for American companies looking to conduct shipping and logistics business in those nations. I had a good degree of success. Eventually that was, I think, recognized and rewarded and earned me a good leadership position within the department.

I should note that we had tremendous assistance from the U.S. private sector in our international negotiations. We really looked for and val-

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ued guidance, input, advice, and counsel from the U.S. business community, including in particular the NITL. My first exposure to the league was with [former ICC commissioner and then NITL president and CEO] Ed Emmett. I really valued his advice, his insights. I knew that he was representing a large cross-section of the American shipper community. While I was downloading ideas from companies like American President Lines and, back then, SeaLand and others, I was also getting some really valuable assistance from Ed and Peter Gatti on the NITL staff. Peter is still with us here today. He does a tremendous job for us.

QNow that you’re heading up NITL, do you have a single overriding priority for yourself in leading the organization? AI do. It is the membership first and always and their concerns and their interests. They know the challenges, but they also know their own set of needs.

QWhat is their most important need?

AThey need a market. They need a transportation marketplace that works fluidly, and works according to an assumed set of rules that we would recognize as a free and open marketplace that is transparent, that does not engage in economic regulation but that does work cooperatively with industry and government on the regulation of safety and environmental protection. There is a value set that the membership has and has had for a very long time.

One of the things I found really attractive about the league is its long history—this is our 101st year—and its consistency over time in supporting free markets, transparency in law and regulation of those markets, and staying on message. This organization is not like watching a tennis match, where the ball is in this court and then, an instant later, in the other court, or if I play tennis, all over the court.