Name: Martin Marietta CEO: Border Wall Means Big Business
Uploaded: 2018-04-04
Duration: 4 min 39 s
Description: Ward Nye says that the proposed scope of Trump's wall would require 'significant products' from the construction supply company.

Ward, you met with President Trump recently and one of the topics of discussion was rebuilding America's roads and highways and tunnels and bridges. What did the president tell you specifically about when this is all gonna happen. Of course, he'd like to see it happen. And he's rolled out a plan that's a $ 1. 5 trillion plan. I think he's looking for specifics really from Congress. But importantly he's looking for specifics from the business community as well. So it was a good dialogue. I'm certainly not the first person to speak with him about this. I'm sure I won't be the last person to speak with him about this. But we do have an under investment. For a long time in infrastructure, and he wants to address that. Is there a money for it? I mean we hear from Congress that they're not in favor of this. They've already done those big tax cuts. Where is the money gonna come from? You know [ UNKNOWN ], I'm not sure Congress is in favor of that. I think Congress is wondering how best to pay for it. And here's the fundamental dilemma. Congress is paid for it for 50 plus years. So they're looking at a 25 cents gas tax increase over a period of five years. And if you go and look at the chamber's history, that's the only tax that I can think of in the history of the chamber that they've tried to push upward. So the chamber's certainly there and the American Trucking Association is as well. They're looking more at 20 cents as opposed to the quarter. That the U. S. Chamber is, but for every penny of gas tax that you get an increase in or a user fee is the way we like to think about it, it's about $ 1. 7 billion in increased revenue going into the Highway Trust Fund. How realistic is it? I think if we could look at some form of user fee increase, we're at a minimum If we could index the use of [ UNKNOWN ], then it could be awfully helpful. Lets talk a little bit more about [ UNKNOWN ] itself President Trump is also a big advocate of building a wall between the United States and Mexico and given that your company is the leading supplier of things like concrete and gravel. How much of a money maker can that be for your company? It would be considerable amounts of stone and concrete and cement. So it's hard to put specific numbers to it right now. In fact, just a couple of weeks ago, Preston Trump was in San Diego looking at different portions of walls to determine What specifications that he's most interested in. So we're not entirely sure what that's going to look like. But it's impossible to think about something that would be of that scope that wouldn't require significant products from Martin Marietta. So we're hearing a lot about trade tarrifs. To what extent could this help or hurt your business? I don't believe they'll hurt our business. I think they could actually help a piece of our business, because we do have some of our business that's actually tied very directly to the manufacturer's steel. And if we see steel capacity utilization go up in the United States, particularly past 70 %, And that's really a relatively low bar. We think that's very helpful to Martin Marietta. But what about overall with the Trump trade tarriffs? Do you feel like many CEOs that the tarriffs. Could slow down the US economy, what are your thoughts on that? My thoughts are it won't particularly slow it down. I think we don't even really know who's going to be affected, and how. I think we're looking for fundamental fairness. I think we're likely to see Canada and Mexico exempt from it. And if we see those types of exemptions we are likely to end up in a [ UNKNOWN ] bottom list. When you talk to your customers I know you go out a lot to building sites and where you are doing your projects, what are you hearing from your customers about the business environment? I'm hearing from them that they have better [ UNKNOWN ] today than they've had in more than a decade. I'm hearing that they're having a need to hire more people. And I'm hearing that they're having record years last year and looking at a better year this year. So if we're looking at the contracting community, naturally who our customers are. They're going into this year with a heightened level of optimism that I haven't seen for quite a while. You do sound pretty optimistic. I mean, how bullish are you about the economy? Well I think it's going to be a good slow steady extended run. And actually a business like ours does really well with that, we don't do particularly well with peaky and troughy periods that move that way in erratic cycles. Good slow steady cycles for us, is really the best type of cycle that we can be in. [ BLANK_AUDIO ]

Martin Marietta CEO: Border Wall Means Big Business

Leadership

Ward Nye says that the proposed scope of Trump's wall would require "significant products" from the construction supply company.