About Frederick Smith
Frederick Smith, founder and former CEO of FedEx, has continued to comment on trade, economic policy, and supply chain issues in public appearances. In a January 2023 conversation at MIT, Smith said he was personally disappointed by China's shift toward a "state directed Mercantile path" after he had pushed for its entry into the WTO. He also stated that "work is now optional" in the U.S., attributing inflation and slow growth to a lack of blue-collar labor willing to work. Smith expressed support for a carbon tax and said FedEx does not view Amazon as a direct competitor.
In earlier appearances, Smith advocated for infrastructure investment, calling the 2021 bipartisan infrastructure bill "a step in the right direction." He said the U.S. should not abandon the Trans-Pacific Partnership but improve it, and warned that withdrawal from NAFTA would have "massive repercussions." Smith has repeatedly called for lowering the U.S. corporate tax rate and adopting a territorial tax system, arguing that the current code discourages investment. He also stated that 85% of U.S. job losses over the past 25 years were due to automation, not trade.
Source: AI-verified profile updated from Frederick Smith's recent appearances.
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✨ AI-enhanced transcript with speaker attribution
I
Interviewer0:10
Forever. I know part of your job is to, and this has always been part of your job, is to keep your radar alert to changes in technology that are going to change your business. You described this 50% improvement in battery technology, which I presume has to do with some chemistry that's in the labs right now. With that in mind, when do you think, just to throw a number out there, when do you think 20% of the FedEx pickup and delivery fleet in the United States will be electric?
F
Frederick Smith0:46
I think there's a good chance that we would cross that threshold, and I'll just throw out a number, perhaps seven years.
I
Interviewer0:55
Seven years. Mhm. Because it's very profound. I mean, when you're talking about taking the operating cost and cutting it by 80%, that's a big deal.
F
Frederick Smith1:06
Yeah, so the capital cost if they truly come down the way I anticipate that they will, then I think that a large part of light-duty transportation, including our personal transportation, the vehicle I mentioned that we're going to be putting in Los Angeles — I guess we've already got them out there as a matter of fact — it has about a 100-mile range, which is perfectly adequate for most pickup and delivery operations. So another 50 miles of range or power and cutting the battery cost in half, and you really have a compelling, disruptive technology.
I
Interviewer1:44
So seven years to 20% — that's just a guess, sure. But while we're guessing, how many years to 100%?
F
Frederick Smith1:51
Well, I don't know that we'd ever get to 100% because in places like Montana where there are few stops and many miles between stops, probably diesel or biodiesel might be the solution. But I think you could see a very large part of the light-duty fleet in the United States converted to electricity. We're a member of a group called the Electrification Coalition that includes us, Nissan, a number of power companies, battery manufacturers, and so forth. And we released a report — you can Google it up if you want, or use another search engine if you prefer — but the Electrification Coalition's recommendations to the nation, which were then verified by an econometric study we had done by the University of Maryland, indicates that if you could move forward with the electrification program that we recommended in this report, you could take today's light-duty oil consumption of approximately 10 million barrels a day — that's roughly half of our national consumption — and if you went business as usual 25 years out, that would be about 14 million barrels a day. And if you take the recommendations of the Electrification Coalition and its predecessor organization, which was built up of some CEOs and generals that really looked at this problem from a national security standpoint, and throw in there the fuel efficiency standards that have been put in place, that number is about 4 million barrels a day. I mean, this is big stuff.
