Press Briefing by Press Secretary Jen Psaki, January 31, 2022
JANUARY 31, 2022
James S. Brady Press Briefing Room
1:10 P.M. EST
MS. PSAKI: Hi, everyone. Hello. Happy Monday. Okay, I just have two items for all of you at the top.
During President Biden’s first 11 months in office, American agricultural exports reached a record $160 billion, generating an estimated $342 billion in total economic output and supporting more than 1.2 million jobs here in the United States. While we’re proud of this historic progress, we know that agricultural exports could have increased even more but for pandemic-induced supply chain challenges.
For example, the Port of Oakland, which is underutilized, where other ports are — you know, get most of the traffic. So, the U.S. Department of Agriculture is partnering with the Port of Oakland to set up a new 25-acre pop-up site to make it easier for agricultural companies to fill empty shipping containers with commodities, like American soybeans, dairy, and specialty crops such as nuts and fruit to ensure there can be more of these goods shipped out of that port.
USDA and the Department of Transportation also continue to call on ocean carriers to mitigate disruptions to agricultural shippers by restoring service — full and fair service to the Port of Oakland, meaning they shouldn’t bypass it. They should go there because there’s going to be all these big shipping containers of agricultural goods.
One other item before we get to your questions. Today, we released the first edition of our Bipartisan Infrastructure Law guidebook to help state, local, Tribal, and territorial governments acr- — access the benefits from the historic investments in our nation’s infrastructure bill.
The guidebook is a one-stop shop on the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and contains the most comprehensive information to date on the more than 375 programs included in the law.
And our primary goal with this is to help our partners across the country know what to apply for, who to contact for help, and how to get ready to rebuild, especially for underserved and overburdened communities who may have more limited municipal capacity to navigate funding programs available.
We’ve also published an accompanying data file that allows users to quickly sort programs funded under the law by fields like agency, amount, recipient, or program name to make it eas- — as easy as humanly possible.
With that, Zeke.
Q Thanks, Jen. I just wanted to start with tensions between Russia and Ukraine. We’ve heard in the last couple of days from some Ukrainian offi- — government officials minimizing or downplaying the imminence of a potential Russian invasion. There seems to be disconnect between Washington and Kyiv here. And is there concerns in Washington that talking up the Russian threat is, in fact, weakening the Ukrainian government?
MS. PSAKI: Well, I can only speak for our intention and our responsibility, and we feel it’s important to be open and candid about the threat from Russia.
It’s not just words, of course. You are seeing specifics that we’ve been laying out here, including over 100,000 troops on Ukraine’s borders — amassed on the border, with more troops and weaponry on the way.
