Maersk General Counsel Peter Jabbour said the pandemic changed the way New Jersey talks about its ports.
Jabbour, speaking last week at a panel at the N.J. Performing Arts Center in Newark, brought a crowd of approximately 150 into the negotiations Maersk, the global shipping giant, had during the most recent lease talks.
The Port Authority, he said, began treating the Port of New York and New Jersey as one of its most critical economic gateways, and as a place where private infrastructure investment could be unlocked rather than just managed.
Jabbour was speaking at NJPAC’s most recent Business Partners Roundtable, “The Cost of Doing Business: The Impact of Tariffs on the American Economy.”
The panel included Representative Rob Menendez (D, 8th District); Jayne Millard, executive chairman of electrical and industrial distributor Turtle; Francis Walsh, chairman and CEO of logistics company NRS; and Jabbour, who oversees legal and strategic issues for Maersk.
The panel was moderated by Colleen Wilson of the Bergen Record and USA Today Network — one of the top transportation and logistics reporters in the state.
Menendez (D, 8th District) offered key insights. He tied the shift of priorities at the Port directly to everyday life in his district.
During the COVID years, he said, the country moved from a more service-based model to a more goods-based economy — and that the port was suddenly driving a much bigger share of economic activity, with strong traffic continuing even as the public health emergency faded.
Together, the comments capture a simple but important change: Ports are no longer treated as background infrastructure in New Jersey’s economy. They are being recognized as core economic engines that sit at the center of global trade, local jobs and even public health, where decisions about tariffs, infrastructure and technology show up quickly in prices, paychecks and neighborhood air quality.
