Vowing retribution but urged to show restraint, Israel has yet to agree on its response to an expansive drone and missile strike carried out on its territories by Iran on Saturday.

A Monday meeting of Israel’s five-person war Cabinet, headed by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, concluded without comment on whether the Jewish state will honor its pledge to “exact a price” from Tehran or concede to calls for a measured response from international leaders.

The prolonged deliberation came after the Israeli military said that Iran on Saturday fired more than 300 drones and missiles at its soil. It claimed that it and international allies eliminated 99% of these attacks as part of its now-dubbed “Iron Shield” operation.

The U.S., U.K., France and Jordan assisted in intercepting these threats. Tehran said its assault was in response to an Israeli strike that killed several top commanders at an Iranian consulate in Damascus, Syria, on April 1 — an offensive for which Israel has yet to claim responsibility.

Iran said the Saturday hostilities have “concluded” its retaliation — and Israel is now left to consider next steps.

The Israeli war Cabinet is set to meet again Tuesday, according to Reuters. The prime minister’s office and Foreign Ministry did not immediately respond to a CNBC request for comment.

Speaking after the Cabinet’s Monday gathering, an Israeli official said that the country’s decision-makers believe it is important for any potential response to closely follow the attack, and that such a gesture would be coordinated with Washington, NBC News reports.

Concerns are mounting that the conflict — rooted in the Oct. 7 terror attack undertaken by Palestinian militant group Hamas and Israel’s retaliatory war campaign in the Gaza Strip — will seep into the broader Middle East region. Since October, Israel has traded fire with a spate of other Iran-supported factions, such as Lebanon’s Hezbollah, Yemeni Houthis and Bashar Assad’s Syrian administration.

Global markets have also been rattled by the hostilities. Oil prices have been bolstered by the potential for disruptions from heavyweight crude producer Iran, and international maritime trade has faced delays and suspensions amid Houthi attacks in the Red Sea.

“There are those in the war Cabinet now who will be pushing for a wider campaign in Lebanon against Hezbollah, against Iran itself to take advantage of this moment,” Julien Barnes-Dacey, director of the Middle East and North Africa program at the European Council on Foreign Relations, said Tuesday on CNBC’s “Street Signs Europe.”

Netanyahu, who has previously battled fraud and corruption charges and civil protests over his proposed judicial reforms, faces domestic pressure to assume a hard line against Iran – and international ones to stand down.

In a Google-translated social media post, Israel’s foreign minister, Israel Katz, said he is mobilizing a “diplomatic offensive” against Iran, noting that he has sent 32 world figures a letter “calling for calling for sanctions to be imposed on the Iranian missile project and that the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps be declared a terrorist organization.”

The Israeli military has also signaled its readiness to respond: “Iran will face the consequences for its actions. We will choose our response accordingly,” IDF Chief of General Staff Herzi Halevi said Monday night in a video address.

Yet U.S. officials say a potential Israeli retaliation could be restricted in scope to strikes against Iranian military forces and Iranian-backed proxies outside of Iranian territory, four U.S. officials told NBC News, with three sources adding that Washington does not intend to participate in such an offensive.

CNBC could not independently verify these reports.

“All that is left of “Mr. Security” is a village of ruins from Bari to Kiryat Shmona, and a complete loss of Israeli deterrence,” Israeli opposition leader Yair Lapid said of Netanyahu on social media, according to a Google translation. “It’s election time, now.”

But Ehud Olmert, former Israeli prime minister, told CNBC’s Dan Murphy that the absence of casualties and limited damage resulting from the Saturday attack means Israel may now “act in a quieter and more restrained and more reserved manner to somehow bring to a halt a direct confrontation with Iran.”

He acknowledged that Netanyahu is under strain from right-wing groups within the cabinet that are demanding a very “tough and painful reprisal” against Israel, but stressed “it’d be a mistake to attack Iran now. We defeated Iran on Saturday night.”

He added, “[U.S. President Joe] Biden wants to contain the situation, not to allow it to expand, and we all are in the same page with President Biden.”

The U.S. leader, who previously vowed “ironclad” commitment to Israel, has told Netanyahu that the White House would not join offensive operations against Iran, a senior administration official told NBC News.

World leaders across Europe, Asia-Pacific and the Middle East have widely called for calm, with Saudi Arabia — a now reconciled former foe of Iran — urging “the utmost levels of restraint.”

Iran rained a deluge of drones and missiles on Israel on Saturday night in response to a suspected Israeli strike that killed top Iranian officials in Syria, in a deep escalation of Middle East tensions.

Israel said it identified 300 “threats of various types” and eliminated “99%” of those bound for Israeli soil, according to an update from an Israel Defense Forces spokesperson, Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari. He said a 10-year-old girl was “severely injured by shrapnel” but reported no additional casualties, adding that “several launches” were also made toward Israel from Iraq, Yemen and Lebanon.  

Last night marked the first instance of a direct attack on Israel from Iranian territory. Iran-backed factions – such as Palestinian militant group Hamas, Lebanon’s Hezbollah, Yemeni Houthi and Bashar al-Assad’s Syrian administration – have engaged militarily with the Jewish state.  

Earlier on Saturday, Iran’s Revolutionary Guards had seized a cargo ship in the Strait of Hormuz, claiming a connection to Israel.

Iran’s chief of staff of the armed forces, Major General Mohammad Bagheri, said that Tehran’s operation had now concluded and would involve no further actions, in comments carried by Iran’s state-owned Islamic Republic News Agency.

“At this juncture, the Islamic Republic of Iran has no intention of continuing defensive operations, but if necessary, it will not hesitate to protect its legitimate interests against any new aggression,” Iran’s Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian said on social media on Sunday, according to a Google translation.

Israel and Iran have been on the cusp of direct conflict since the start of Israel’s military campaign in the Gaza Strip, which came in response to Hamas’ terror attack of Oct. 7. Iran vowed revenge after a suspected Israeli strike on an Iranian consulate in Damascus, Syria, on April 1, which killed several top Iranian military commanders.

“We will not be able to comment on the claims regarding a strike in Damascus,” an Israeli foreign ministry spokesperson told CNBC by email, adding, “Iran’s attack on Israel on the night of April 14th is a direct attack on a sovereign nation, its use of proxies for the last decades and the destabilizing effect of the Ayatollah regime in the region and beyond must end.”

Israel’s Ambassador to the U.N., Gilad Erdan, has also called an emergency meeting of the U.N. Security Council and “demanded that they condemn Iran’s attack on Israel and designate the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps as a terror organization.”

The European Union has blasted Tehran’s offensive: “The EU strongly condemns the unacceptable Iranian attack against Israel,” EU High Representative Josep Borrell said late Saturday on social media. “This is an unprecedented escalation and a grave threat to regional security.”

U.S. President Joe Biden also denounced the Iranian strike on Saturday as “unprecedented” and asked to convene G7 leaders to “coordinate a united diplomatic response to Iran’s brazen attack,” according to a White House statement.  

“While we have not seen attacks on our forces or facilities today, we will remain vigilant to all threats and will not hesitate to take all necessary action to protect our people,” he added.

Relations between stalwart allies Washington and Israel had appeared to slightly chill in recent weeks, with Biden warning further support would hinge on Israel taking steps to protect civilians and humanitarian aid workers in the Gaza enclave.

But the U.S. – alongside the U.K. and France, according to Israeli military – intervened to mitigate last night’s Iranian attack and the assault could reignite urgency to pass a key $95 billion bill including funding for Israel and Ukraine, which has passed the Senate but stagnated on Republican opposition in the U.S. House of Representatives.

“In light of Iran’s unjustified attack on Israel, the House will move from its previously announced legislative schedule next week to instead consider legislation that supports our ally Israel and holds Iran and its terrorist proxies accountable,” said House leader Steve Scalise on social media.

“Congress must also do its part. The national security supplemental that has waited months for action will provide critical resources to Israel and our own military forces in the region,” Mitch McConnell, Senate Republican leader, said in a statement. “We cannot hope to deter conflict without demonstrating resolve and investing seriously in American strength.”

Oil futures prices are in focus after intermittently swelling in recent months on trade disruptions and delays caused by Red Sea maritime attacks from Yemen’s Houthi, who claim solidarity with the Palestinian people.

Iran is also home to vast oil resources, which it has been largely routing toward China since the U.S. reimposed sanctions during Donald Trump’s administration.

The Iranian currency fell to a record low of 705,000 rials / USD on the unofficial market around 10:30 a.m. local time on Sunday, according to data from foreign exchange monitoring site Bonbast.

The Tel Aviv Stock Exchange’s flagship index, the TA-35, was down 0.38% at 10:23 a.m. London time.

In aviation, several airlines grounded or diverted service through the Middle East, following the Iranian attack. Jordan, Iraq and Lebanon have reopened their airspaces after brief closures on Saturday in the wake of the offensive, Reuters reports.

— CNBC’s Emma Graham contributed to this report

A measure of wholesale prices increased less than expected in March, providing some potential relief from worries that inflation will hold higher for longer than many economists had expected.

The producer price index rose 0.2% for the month, less than the 0.3% estimate from the Dow Jones consensus and not as much as the 0.6% increase in February, according to a release Thursday from the Labor Department’s Bureau of Labor Statistics.

However, on a 12-month basis, the PPI climbed 2.1%, the biggest gain since April 2023, indicating pipeline pressures that could keep inflation elevated.

Excluding food and energy, the core PPI also rose 0.2%, meeting expectations. Excluding trade services from the core level, the increase was 0.2% monthly but 2.8% from a year ago.

The release comes a day after the BLS reported that consumer prices again rose more than expected in March, raising concerns that the Federal Reserve will be unable to lower interest rates anytime soon.

On the producer price side, March’s gain was pushed by services, which saw a 0.3% increase on the month. Within that category, the index for securities brokerage and other investment-related fees jumped 3.1%.

Conversely, goods prices decreased 0.1%, flipping a 1.2% increase in February. Final demand costs for energy, which have been on the rise lately, actually fell 1.6% on the month. However, wholesale prices for final demand food and goods less food and energy climbed 0.8% and 0.1%, respectively.

Though prices have been rising at the pump, the final demand index for gasoline fell 3.6%. That contrasted with the consumer price index, which showed gasoline up 1.7% on the month.

Markets showed little reaction to the data, with futures tied to major stock indexes slightly higher though Treasury yields declined.

In other economic news Thursday, initial filings for jobless benefits fell to 211,000, a decline of 11,000 from the previous week’s upwardly revised level and below the 217,000 estimate from Dow Jones.

Continuing claims, which run a week behind, increased to 1.82 million, up 28,000 for the period, according to the Labor Department release.

The economic data points are being watched closely as the Federal Reserve contemplates its next moves on monetary policy.

Wednesday’s CPI release jolted markets, which had been anticipating an aggressive series of interest rate cuts this year. The report showed annual inflation running at 3.5%, well above the Fed’s 2% target.

The market now is pricing in the possibility of just two cuts this year, likely not starting until September, according to CME Group data.

PARIS — Issuers of spot bitcoin exchange-traded funds on Tuesday say the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission is unlikely to approve such a product for the cryptocurrency ether.

The regulator has a late-May deadline to conclude its review on an ether ETF. That comes after the SEC in March delayed its original deadline for a decision on the ether ETF application.

Companies ranging from BlackRock to Fidelity and VanEck, which issued spot bitcoin ETFs this year, have been waiting for approval for an ether product.

Some issuers are not confident that the SEC will green light the ether applications.

“We were the first to file as well for Ethereum in the U.S., and we and [Ark Invest CEO] Cathy Wood, are kind of the first in line for May, I guess, to probably be rejected,” VanEck CEO Jan Van Eck told CNBC’s Arjun Kharpal at the Paris Blockchain Week crypto event in Paris, France.

Ark Invest was not immediately available for comment when contacted by CNBC.

“The way the legal process goes is the regulators will give you comments on your application, and that happened for weeks and weeks before the Bitcoin ETFs — and right now, pins are dropping as far as Ethereum is concerned,” Van Eck added.

Enthusiasm has been mounting among the crypto community for an ether ETF, ever since the SEC approved the first spot bitcoin ETFs in January.

The ether price has been climbing this past week on the back of hopes that the SEC will approve an ether-backed ETF.

The token is up about 10% in the last seven days, according to CoinGecko data.

However, the SEC has signaled that it might not be so willing to approve such an investment product.

SEC Chair Gary Gensler has previously stressed that “the vast majority of crypto assets are investment contracts and thus subject to the federal securities laws,” in the SEC’s view.

This complicates matters for an ether ETF.

“We are observing the Ethereum decision very, very closely,” CoinShares CEO Jean-Marie Mognetti told CNBC on Tuesday. “CoinShares was not in the race for the bitcoin ETF until three months before the approval, and we managed to qualify ourselves at the last minute.”

He was equally pessimistic over the odds of gaining such an approval in the short term.

CoinShares is not one of the companies in the running for an ether ETF in the U.S.

“I don’t see anything being approved this side of the year,” he noted, suggesting it may be difficult to gain SEC approval for proof of stake — a protocol specific to blockchain.

Bitcoin is underpinned by a different protocol, known as proof of work, where volunteer miners validate transactions and mint new tokens.

The SEC has not taken issue with proof of work from a securities law standpoint.

Every tech company is talking up its AI opportunity. Oracle is no exception. But during an earnings call in March, Oracle’s Larry Ellison laid out a future market opportunity focused on a major customer that investors may think about less often that Fortune 500 companies.

The Oracle founder, former CEO and current chairman and chief technology officer, sees national and state government applications being run on platforms like Oracle Cloud Infrastructure to a much greater degree than today, and indicated that it’s starting to happen in a variety of ways.

“We talk about, you know, winning business with companies. For the first time, we’re beginning to win business for countries,” Ellison said. “We have a number of countries where we’re negotiating sovereign regions with the national government.”

Major tech companies vying for massive government contracts in the cloud are nothing new. Microsoft and Amazon had a lengthy battle over a cloud deal with the Department of Defense, and both those AI players as well as Oracle and Google ended up all in on a $9 billion DoD contract in 2022.

But Ellison went further in his prediction when speaking with analysts on the recent earnings call, saying “Every government, pretty much every government, is going to want a sovereign cloud and a dedicated region for that government.”

Oracle, which works with Nvidia and Microsoft on generative AI capabilities, has already helped use cloud tech to cut red tape for countries. One example Ellison gave was Albania. It is trying to ascend to the European Union with the help of chatGPT, with the generative AI helping to decipher and summarize its laws and aid the country in what it needs to change in order to be compliant with E.U. regulations.

“It took Serbia eight years to harmonize their laws to be able to join the E.U.,” Ellison said. “Albania is facing the same thing, but with generative AI, we can read the entire corpus of the Albanian laws and actually harmonize their laws with the EU in probably more like 18 months to two years.”

Some analysts are skeptical of Ellison’s talk as being anything more than typical C-suite rallying for a key business unit. Oracle shares are up about 21% YTD, but Barclays analyst Raimo Lenschow expressed concern about lower OCI growth during its latest earnings, which could “worry investors, as this is the main investment story.”

A version of future featuring cloud services and artificial intelligence-powered solutions can make government more efficient. Ellison said for starters, redundancy is a focus for government, in the case of disaster and disaster recovery. But it’s also moving into health care information and internet access projects.

Countries including Serbia are standardizing on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure and using generative AI for processes like automating health care. Deals related to delivery of internet services in partnership with Elon Musk’s Starlink to remote areas are taking place in Kenya and Rwanda, where OCI and Starlink are mapping rural farms to see which crops are growing in what area, and if they are getting enough nutrients like nitrogen and water.

“These maps are AI-assisted, help them plan their agricultural output and predict their agricultural output, predict markets, the logistics of the agricultural output, doing all of all of those things as next-generation national applications,” Ellison said.

Food security, rural school and rural hospital internet access, are other examples of what Ellison said are among the “all sorts of interesting new AI applications out there that you’ve probably never heard of before, at least I hadn’t heard of before until these last 12 months now that we’ve worked on and we’re now in the process of delivering.”

He also mentioned automation of vaccination programs, and other healthcare program “across the board.”

“We’re living in a world where like data and information is the gold of the future,” said Dan Gardner, CEO of digital strategy agency Code and Theory. “If the government can get access and action on that their data faster, why would we want to slow that down? We want that to be as efficient as possible. A lot of that is like mundane human resources, that maybe those people could be doing something else that is way more valuable.”

Cloud and generative AI applications allowing countries to give rural areas internet access could increase educational opportunities and create more economic value. It could also allow citizens to have more insight into government processes, said Tapan Parikh, Cornell University associate professor. “One thing technology’s always been good at is potentially making bureaucracies more efficient, or at least more transparent internally,” he said.

‘Black Mirror’ governments

But the push to move more government processes to the cloud is also opening the door to new risks, especially as countries trust newly developed generative AI systems. While they may make processes faster than ever, there are bound to be mistakes as the technology develops and could make citizen data accessible to cyber criminals.

“We shouldn’t use these technologies as an excuse to not maintain oversight and control over political processes,” Parikh said. “Certainly, I think that’s a very important thing, particularly when you’re dealing with countries that may not have the same kind of governance capacity.”

Oracle did not respond to a request for additional comment on Ellison’s earnings call discussion.

“There’s the ‘Black Mirror’ bad side of it: Big Brother, data wars, AI warfare and all that stuff,” Garder said. “As far as like removing red tape and being more efficient and getting better use out of crops across the country, that’s incredible. That’s the multiplier of humanity that could really improve because of AI.”

AI raises a host of concerns.

Gardner pointed to the proliferation of more generative content in an election year around the world and all the issues related to tech-enabled interference. “Maybe it’s not like chips on the ground. But it’s data security, authentication of who you are, who governments are, what content you’re viewing, all the connection points between financial systems, and AI governance. Using AI as a tool of destruction is quite scary.” 

“No big government in the world can afford to move all of their services and especially critical ones like defense, taxes, health care, completely into the cloud and into the hands of gen AI,” said Simone Bohnenberger, chief product officer at cloud company Phrase. “It’s just not in the realm of, I think it’s not responsible to do that. The potential risks outweigh the benefits of doing that.”

OpenAI, which created ChatGPT, is mostly trained on existing content on the internet. That could pose a problem, especially when text from lesser known languages like Albanian need to be analyzed, Bohnenberger said.

“If you look at the World Wide Web or the internet, the vast majority of content there’s English, I think a quarter of the content is English, followed by Chinese,” she said. “Albanian is a minority. It’s very questionable for me how well that actually works for a small country like Albania and like an outlier language, because there’s just not much data you can train a model on. And if you don’t have much data, then the outputs will be very messy.”

Then there’s security and data risks with allowing foreign companies access to citizen data, Parikh said. Even the U.S., with all its resources, has been vulnerable to data hacks, including a recent February incident with contractor CGI Federal which exposed personally identifiable information on employees. The recent battle between the U.S. and China over TikTok is an example of how control of sensitive consumer data can be interjected into geopolitics. “I think certainly that’s a concern going forward for countries who are working with vendors from different countries,” Parikh said.

DETROIT – Ford Motor is delaying production of a new all-electric large SUV and pickup truck, as it shifts to offer hybrid options across its entire North American lineup by 2030.

The Detroit automaker on Thursday said it will continue to invest in EVs, but it is postponing production of the three-row SUV at a plant in Canada from 2025 to 2027 to allow for the market to mature more. The pickup is being pushed back from late 2025 to 2026.

The shift in EV plans is the latest for Ford and the entire automotive industry as adoption has been slower than many expected and production costs remain high.

Ford last year said it would delay or cancel $12 billion in planned spending on new electric vehicles due to the shifting market conditions as well as challenges to profitably building and selling the vehicles. It was not immediately clear whether the new delays were part of those plans.

“As the No. 2 EV brand in the U.S. for the past two years, we are committed to scaling a profitable EV business, using capital wisely and bringing to market the right gas, hybrid and fully electric vehicles at the right time,” Ford CEO Jim Farley said Thursday in a statement.

The three-row SUV was part of a roughly $1.3 billion investment to transition Ford’s Oakville Assembly Plant in Ontario, Canada, into a new electric vehicle hub. It was supposed to be Ford’s first time completely retooling a North American facility producing gas-powered vehicles into one that manufactures EVs.

“The additional time will allow for the consumer market for three-row EVs to further develop and enable Ford to take advantage of emerging battery technology, with the goal to provide customers increased durability and better value,” the company said in a release.

Ford said it will continue to focus its EV efforts on new plants such as its “BlueOval City” campus in Tennessee rather than transitioning current facilities producing engine-powered vehicles to all-electric models.

“Our breakthrough, next-generation EVs will be new from the ground up and fully software enabled, with ever-improving digital experiences and a multitude of potential services,” Farley said.

The automaker said the massive Tennessee facility, which was part of an $11.4 billion investment announced in 2021, will begin production of Ford’s next-generation all-electric truck, codenamed “T3,” in 2026, rather than 2025.

Ford said it is continuing construction of battery plants in Michigan, Tennessee and Kentucky.

In the first quarter of 2024, Ford’s electric vehicle sales increased by 86% from subdued levels a year earlier. Hybrid sales for the automaker rose 42% year over year, while sales of Ford’s traditional vehicles with internal combustion engines were up 2.6%.

Ford’s “Model e” electric vehicle business lost $4.7 billion in 2023, including $1.57 billion during the fourth quarter. In February, the automaker said it expected the unit to lose between $5 billion and $5.5 billion in 2024.

The collapse of Baltimore’s Francis Scott Key Bridge is likely to send shock waves across the U.S. economy, as a key shipping route for certain goods remains snarled for the foreseeable future, officials said Sunday.

“This is not [just] a Baltimore catastrophe, not a Maryland catastrophe. This is a national economic catastrophe as well,” Maryland Gov. Wes Moore said Sunday on CNN’s “State of the Union.”

The channel that’s now blocked by the wreckage is a primary access point for the Port of Baltimore, which Moore described as among the “busiest [and] most active” in the nation.

“This is going to impact the farmer in Kentucky. This is going to impact the auto dealer in Ohio. This is going to impact the restaurant owner in Tennessee,” he said.

U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg echoed that sentiment.

“It’s important not just to the people and the workers of Baltimore, but to our national supply chains to get that port back up and running as quickly as possible,” Buttigieg said on CBS’ “Face the Nation.”

The bridge collapsed Tuesday after a large cargo ship crashed into it, following a mayday call shortly before the collision. Two construction workers died; four are missing and presumed dead.

An operation to remove the ship, clear out debris and reopen the channel began Saturday, officials said.

“Parts of the non-federal channel are already being worked on and there is a 1,000-ton-capacity lift crane on a barge being put into place now,” Buttigieg said. There’s another 600-ton crane on the way, he added.

There isn’t yet a timeline for that salvage work to be completed, Buttigieg said. The time frame for the bridge to be rebuilt is also unclear, he said.

Federal and local officials reiterated that the operation would be lengthy and complex.

“We have a ship that is nearly the size of the Eiffel Tower that is now stuck within the channel that has the Key Bridge sitting on top of it,” Moore said. “And so this is going to be a long road. … But movement is happening.”

The Port of Baltimore processed a record 1.1 million containers of cargo in 2023, according to state data. That made it the ninth-busiest port in the nation based on U.S. trade volume, wrote Ryan Petersen, chief executive of Flexport, a supply chain logistics company.

It also handled nearly 850,000 shipments of cars and light trucks in 2023, more than any other port for the 13th consecutive year, according to state data.

“This port is the No. 1 port for cars and farm equipment,” Baltimore Mayor Brandon Scott said Sunday on “Face the Nation.”

“So this matters to folks in rural North Carolina and Kansas and Iowa,” he added. “This matters to the global economy.”

Additionally, there are more than 15,000 people who work directly for the port, and thousands of others whose livelihoods depend on it, Sen. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., said on ABC’s “This Week.”

The Small Business Administration announced Saturday that it would make low-interest, long-term loans of up to $2 million available to local small businesses in the mid-Atlantic region affected by the bridge collapse.

The U.S. government awarded Maryland an initial $60 million in funding to clear the wreckage. The federal government will cover 90% of the costs to rebuild the bridge, said Van Hollen. He plans to introduce legislation along with Sen. Ben Cardin, D-Md., to cover the remaining 10%, Van Hollen said.

President Joe Biden said Tuesday that he intends for the federal government to pay for the entire cost of rebuilding the bridge, and expects Congress to support that effort.

Some lawmakers have balked at the idea, though. Rep. Dan Meuser, R-Pa., called Biden’s notion of using federal funds to cover the full cost “kind of outrageous.”

While the current Congress is divided, Buttigieg expressed confidence that lawmakers would approve bridge funding on a bipartisan basis.

“If we can see Republicans and Democrats cooperate to get President Biden’s infrastructure package through, surely they can cooperate to help America and Baltimore deal with this tragedy,” he said Sunday on MSNBC.

MSC, the largest ocean carrier in the world, has joined the list of ocean carriers terminating the delivery of diverted containers outside of the port for shipping clients as a result of the container ship accident near the Port of Baltimore that led to the tragic bridge collapse. With the Baltimore port indefinitely closed, the decision places the onus of cargo pick up at a diverted port and transport to its final destination on the shipper.

In an email to customers obtained by CNBC on Thursday, MSC explained that for customer containers already on the water bound for the Port of Baltimore, cargo will be rerouted and discharged at an alternate port where it will be made available for pick-up.

“For these shipments, the contract of carriage will be declared terminated at this alternate port and storage, D&Ds and on-carriage costs to the initially intended destination will be for the sole cargo’s account,” the MSC advisory said.

MSC added that “passage to and from Baltimore is at this time impossible and will not be reestablished for several weeks if not months.”

CMA CGM, COSCO, and Evergreen were the first carriers to announce similar moves and in some cases formally declare “force majeure,” a legal term which refers to the right to waive contract duties when events beyond a party’s control occur.

MSC said in its customer communication that it “apologizes for the disruption caused by this contingency plan which is required in response to events beyond our control, but which is taken in compliance with the terms of the contract of carriage.”

MSC did not immediately respond to CNBC’s request for comment.

Maersk is the only major carrier to say it will provide transport from diverted ports for customers. 

Maersk was the charter of the Dali, 10,000-container capacity containership that lost control and crashed into the Francis Scott Key Bridge in the early hours of Tuesday.

After the pandemic boom which led to historic profits, ocean carriers have been through a period of financial and operational challenges, with vessel overcapacity, declining earnings, and the Red Sea Houthi attacks and Panama Canal drought leading to costly diversions from major global trade routes.

Logistics companies have been scrambling since the accident to make alternate transport plans and keep up with carrier diversions, and executives told CNBC on Wednesday that the next few days will be critical in the movement of the diverted trade away from the Port of Baltimore.

The Port of Baltimore, the nation’s eleventh-largest port, is No. 1 in the U.S for auto/light truck and agriculture tractor imports and exports, in addition to handling clothing, household goods, construction materials, electronics and appliances, and produce.

Among the unresolved issues, logistics executives have cited ocean carriers not updating their vessel transits fast enough to alert them to the new diverted port so they can plan for their customer’s container pick-up.

Major ports up and down the East Coast, including Savannah, Brunswick, Virginia, Charleston, and New York/New Jersey, as well as the companies providing chassis for rail and truck transport, have told CNBC they have the capacity to ramp up operations to meet the needs of incoming cargo.

In a series of updates, MSC sent a list of 23 vessels arriving to the diverted ports from March 28-April 29. Eight have an unknown diverted port, 11 are headed to the Port of New York/New Jersey; three to Norfolk; and one to Philadelphia.

On Thursday, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg had a meeting with supply chain professionals about the crisis and how to mitigate any congestion. The meeting included ocean carriers CMA CGM, Maersk, MSC, Evergreen, and railroads CSX and Norfolk Southern. The Port of New York/New Jersey, Georgia, Baltimore, Philadelphia, Jacksonville, South Carolina and Virginia were also in attendance. Shipping clients at the meeting included John Deere, Stellantis, Home Depot, Under Armour, and Volkswagen.

“We are much better equipped to mitigate supply chain disruptions than we were just a few years ago, thanks to increased coordination across the supply chain and new efforts to strengthen both our physical and digital infrastructure,” Buttigieg said, according to a readout from the meeting.

National Economic Advisor Lael Brainard, who was also in attendance, noted that in previous disruptions, the lack of complete information across different components of the private sector and the public sector hampered the decision-making capabilities and responses. She cited the recent DOT FLOW initiative as a difference maker. “It has already been activated to bring the full capacity of all the agencies in the federal government to make sure that we’re helping ocean carriers, port leaders, railroads, shippers, and unions to all come together to assess potential supply chain impacts and then work together to address them.”  

Paul Brashier, vice president of drayage and intermodal at ITS Logistics, said the greatest challenges may be experienced by smaller companies that coordinate the bookings themselves and may not have relationships at these diverted ports. “You want to get your diverted container out of the port as soon as possible so you don’t incur any detention and demurrage fees. For some of these shippers they are starting from scratch,” Brashier said.

Once a container arrives at a terminal, the clock begins ticking on the free time allocated to a container. Once that free time expires, detention and demurrage fees start unless ports agree to waive them.

“We are looking to see if terminals will either give an extension of free time or waive the fees,” Brashier told CNBC on Wednesday. “That’s the rub right now.”

Baltimore’s Francis Scott Key Bridge collapsed after a container ship hit it early Tuesday.

Up to seven people may have fallen into the water after the crash, according to Baltimore City Fire Department Chief James W. Wallace. Two people were rescued, with one transported to a trauma center in very serious condition.

The bridge carries Interstate 695 across the Patapsco River, southeast of the Baltimore metropolitan area.

The crash by the large container ship occurred around 1:30 a.m. ET,  when contractors were working on the bridge, according to Paul Wiedefeld, Maryland’s transportation secretary.

Wiedefeld said the incident is an active search and rescue mission and that vessel traffic into and out of the Port of Baltimore is suspended until further notice.

“This is a very large incident, it involves a very large footprint,” Wallace said in a press briefing.

The fire department chief said sonar scans had detected the presence of submerged vehicles, but could not disclose the number of cars involved.

“The latest information we have on the crew of the ship is that they still are on board of the ship,” Wallace said, adding that rescue agents must first do a damage assessment of the vessel before being able to board. Asked if the ship was suffering any technical impairments, he said, “We do not have that information.”

“There is absolutely no indication that there was any terrorism, that this was done on purpose,” a Baltimore police spokesperson said during the briefing Tuesday. “There is absolutely no indication that this was intentional.”

Completed in 1977, the bridge took the name of Francis Scott Key, whose poem was the foundation of the U.S. national anthem.

The vessel that collided with the bridge has been identified by the U.S. Coast Guard.

“USCG confirms the ship is the 948-ft DALI vessel. USCG has deployed three response boats, and pollution responders are en route from the Sector Maryland-National Capital Region,” the U.S. Coast Guard’s Matthew West told NBC News.

Shipping data indicates that the Singapore-flagged container vessel is under the management of Synergy Marine Group, which said in a statement that all 22 crew members on board, including two pilots, had been accounted for.

“Whilst the exact cause of the incident is yet to be determined, the ‘DALI’ has now mobilised its Qualified Individual Incident response service,” the group said. “The US Coast Guard and local officials have been notified, and the owners and managers are fully cooperating with Federal and State government agencies under an approved plan.”

Marine traffic data suggests the ship was bound for Colombo, Sri Lanka.

Maersk later confirmed chartering the vessel.

“We can confirm that the container vessel ‘DALI’, operated by charter vessel company Synergy Group, is time chartered by Maersk and is carrying Maersk customers’ cargo. No Maersk crew and personnel were onboard the vessel,” the company said.

“We are closely following the investigations conducted by authorities and Synergy, and we will do our utmost to keep our customers informed.”

The Maritime and Port Authority of Singapore said in a statement it “will provide full cooperation to the US Coast Guard in its investigations.”

The office of Maryland Gov. Wes Moore said emergency personnel remained on the scene after the bridge’s collapse.

“I have declared a State of Emergency here in Maryland and we are working with an interagency team to quickly deploy federal resources from the Biden Administration,” the governor said.

“We will remain in close contact with federal, state, and local entities that are carrying out rescue efforts as we continue to assess and respond to this tragedy.”

Correction: This article has been updated to reflect that the Francis Scott Key Bridge carries Interstate 695 and crosses the Patapsco River.