Who’s on the Hook for the U.S. Bridge Collapse?

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Rebuilding could cost billions.

By Cameron Abadi, a deputy editor at Foreign Policy, and Adam Tooze, a columnist at Foreign Policy and director of the European Institute at Columbia University. Sign up for Adam’s Chartbook newsletter here.

The cargo ship Dali sits in the water after running into and collapsing the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore, Maryland.

The cargo ship Dali sits in the water after running into and collapsing the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore, Maryland, on March 26. Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images

The spectacle of the collapse of the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore after a container ship collided with it last week has been followed by various bureaucratic delays. The Port of Baltimore is closed indefinitely; what had been a major traffic artery over the bridge along the Eastern Seaboard of the United States has been diverted to other busy roads; talk of replacing the bridge is caught up in politics; and an insurance payout is caught up in the early stages of litigation. Estimates for the cost of replacing the bridge have ranged from $1 billion to $5 billion.

Cameron Abadi is a deputy editor at Foreign Policy. Twitter: @CameronAbadi

Adam Tooze is a columnist at Foreign Policy and a history professor and the director of the European Institute at Columbia University. He is the author of Chartbook, a newsletter on economics, geopolitics, and history. Twitter: @adam_tooze