“...but he’s not always wrong.”
In this case I think he is. There aren’t enough piers in condition to accept freight from those vessels of Jones category as it is after the hurricane much less a bunch of vessels on top of those from various other sources. The ten days is probably enough, and probably too much.
If you can’t imagine the chaos of a harbor full of ships waiting to unload at limited facilities that will also have to be continuously cleared to accept freight from more incoming vessels I can.
What about the idiotic rule that a foreign ship cannot unload at Seattle, then unload at Portland, then unload at LA? Instead the ship has to choose one? We shouldn’t outright ban foreign vessels from being contracted to do work in US waters, having a tax for companies that do this might be okay, but an outright ban is dumb.