West Coast Trade Context for June 2024
By Jock O’Connell
The five major U.S. West Coast container ports we track collectively handled 1,075,746 inbound loads in June, a 21.9% bump over the preceding June and up 15.3% from June 2019. Outbound loads (341,037) were up 11.8% year-over-year but down 15.1% from June 2019.
Here is how the larger ports we track fared in June, in their own numbers.
In Southern California, the Port of Los Angeles recorded 428,753 inbound loads in June, down 1.5% from a year earlier but up 8.2% from June 2019. Outbound loads (122,515) rose 13.4% year-over-year but remained 12.1% below the 396,307 outbound loads reported in June 2019. Total container traffic through the nation’s busiest container port in this year’s first half (4,731,491) was 4.2% higher than in the first six months of pre-pandemic 2019.
The Port of Long Beach had its fourth busiest month ever in June, with total container moves (loads and empties) amounting to 842,446 TEUs. Inbound loads (419,698) were up 53.0% from a comparatively sluggish June 2023 and were 26.6% higher than in June 2019. Outbound loads (98,300) rose 4.0% from a year earlier but remained 26.6% below the volume recorded five years earlier. YTD, total TEU traffic through the Southern California gateway (4,291,626) was up 16.4% from the first half of 2019.
Up at the San Francisco Bay Area’s Port of Oakland, June produced some deceptively impressive figures. Inbound loads (84,040) jumped by 26.8% from a year earlier, but June 2023 was the lowest June for imports the port had seen since 2020. As it was, inbound loads were up just 3.9% from pre-pandemic June 2019. Outbound loads (66,540) meanwhile rose by 22.9% from a lackluster June 2023 but were down by 11.2% from June 2019. Through this year’s first half, total container moves (1,135,778) though the Northern California port were down 9.5% from the same period in 2019.
We also note that the State of Oregon’s Port of Portland continues to move some container traffic. June 2024 saw a 16.0% year-over-year bump in container traffic to 7,660 TEUs from 6,006 TEUs the previous June. However, the Columbia River port’s total TEU volume in the second quarter (22,005) was down from 25,849 TEUs in this year’s first quarter and from 30,533 in last year’s second quarter. So far this calendar year, the port has handled a total of 47,854 inbound and outbound loads, down 24.6% from this point last year. By comparison, Maine’s Port of Portland has handled 21,520 total TEUs so far in this calendar year.
In the Pacific Northwest, the Northwest Seaport Alliance Ports of Tacoma and Seattle managed 129,789 import loads in June, a 42.5% jump year-over-year as well as a 14.6% increase over June 2019. Export loads (51,656) were up 12.6% from a year ago but just 0.6% ahead of the volume seen in June 2019. Total container moves YTD through the two Washington State ports 1,557,762) were up 13.8% from the first half of 2019.
Across the border in British Columbia, the Port of Vancouver’s 152,912 inbound loads in June exceeded last June’s total by 20.0%, while edging up just 4.3% over June 2019. Outbound loads (67,573) in June were up 3.7% year-over-year but down 33.6% from June 2019. Total container traffic through the Canadian port in the first half of 2024 (1,769.093) exceeded the volume in the same period in 2019 by 4.3%.
Back on the Atlantic Coast, the Port of New York/New Jersey handled 413,833 inbound loads in June, an increase of 17.8% from a year earlier and a gain of 37.2% over June 2019. Outbound loads at the East Coast’s busiest container gateway in June (124,801) were up 12.7.0% year-over-year but still just 1.7% above the volume recorded in June 2019. Total first-half container traffic (4,210,653) represented a 15.3% expansion over the same period in 2019.
The Port of Virginia reported 124,991 inbound loaded TEUs in June, a very modest 0.5% gain over a year earlier but a 10.9% increase from June 2019. Outbound loads (95,262) rose by 15.6% year-over-year and 24.5% from the sixth month of pre-pandemic 2019. Total container traffic through the Mid-Atlantic Coast gateway through the first half of this year (1,792,540) was up 23.2% over the same period in 2019.
At South Carolina’s Port of Charleston, inbound loads in June amounted to 105,883, a 10.5% increase from the previous June and a 14.2% gain over June 2019. Outbound loads (62,377) were up 3.9% from a year earlier but were down 13.5% from June 2019. Total container moves during the first-half of this year (1,240,576) were up just 2.7% from the same period in 2019.
Georgia’s Port of Savannah discharged 226,987 inbound loads in June, a 25.8% year-over-year bump that also represented a 34.5% increase over June 2019. Outbound loads, meanwhile, amounted to 120,366 TEUs, up 8.0% from a year earlier but just 0.9% ahead of June 2019’s volume. Total container traffic in the year’s first-half (2,701,136) was 19.9% higher than in the same period five years earlier.
On the Gulf Coast, Port Houston handled 153,778 inbound loads, a 4.9% gain from a year earlier but a massive 46.2% increase over June 2019. Outbound loads through the Texas port (114,728) were up 10.6% year-over-year but just 7.8% over June 2019. Total container traffic through the first half of 2024 (2,098,117) represented a 12.9% increase from the same period a year ago but a 43.6% expansion over the total volume in the first six months of 2019.
Please note that Port Miami no longer appears in our coverage of the nation’s containerized trade as the Florida maritime gateway port officials have been unable to provide its TEU tallies to us.
As Exhibit 1 reveals, the U.S. ports we monitor reported having handled 2,184,569 inbound loads in June, a 14.6% increase from a year earlier as well as a 17.5% increase over pre-pandemic June 2019. The surge in inbound loads some forecasters had anticipated for May came a month later as U.S. West Coast (USWC) ports saw a 19.6% gain in June from a year earlier. The 1,075,746 inbound loads they handled in June represented 49.2% of all inbound loads nationally in June, up sharply from 46.3% share a year earlier. U.S. East Coast (USEC) ports, meanwhile, saw their collective share of the nation’s inbound container trade decline to 43.3% from 45.4% in June 2023 and from 43.5% in June 2019.
Contrary to claims published elsewhere, the nation’s Top Ten container ports recorded 2,040,018 inbound loads in June, a 17.2% bump over June 2023.
On the export side of the box trade ledger, Exhibit 2 shows that the U.S. ports we track handled 963,111 outbound loaded TEUs in June, with U.S. West Coast ports holding a 35.4% share of the trade, up one percent from a year. U.S. East Coast ports, meanwhile, held a 50.7% share of the nation’s outbound loads in June, down from a 51.6% share last June. The nation’s Top Ten container ports reported 844,407 outbound loads in June, an increase of 11.0% over the previous June but still down 5.9% from June 2019, when outbound loads at the Top Ten container ports totaled 897,064 TEUs.
Exhibit 3 establishes that the North American ports we monitor handled 32,289,792 loaded and empty TEUs in the first half of this year. That was up 11.3% from a year earlier and 10.5% higher than the total handled in the first half of 2019. U.S. ports handled 26,331,697 total TEUs in the first half, an increase of 12.8% from the previous year and up 10.0% than in the first half of 2019. Exhibit 3 also establishes that the Ports of Los Angeles and the Port of Long Beach were the North America’s two busiest container ports during the first half of 2024. A year earlier, the Port of New York/New Jersey had edged out the Port of Long Beach for the Number Two position. In 2019, Long Beach overtook PNYNJ for that slot. Among the major North American ports, all but the Port of Montreal and, for understandable reasons, the Port of Baltimore recorded year-over-year gains in total container traffic in the first half. Compared to the volumes they had reported during the first half of pre-pandemic 2019, the San Pedro Bay Ports of LA and Long Beach together achieved a 9.7% increase in total container traffic. However, the Port of Oakland and the Northwest Seaport Alliance both fell well short of the volumes they had recorded during the first half of 2019. As a result, the five major USWC ports collectively handled 3.8% or 430,667 more loaded and empty TEUs in this year’s first half than they had five years earlier.
Exhibit 4 and Exhibit 5 display the U.S. West Coast ports’ shares of the nation’s containerized trade through the mainland U.S. ports against which USWC ports compete for discretionary cargo. These June 2024 data are derived from import/export documents shippers file with U.S. Customs and Border Protection. For a broader perspective, we compare the most recent month for which data are available with the same month in the preceding year, in pre-pandemic 2019, and a decade earlier. For those who are inclined to add up the numbers, the USWC totals in these two exhibits include international container traffic moving through smaller West Coast ports like San Diego, Hueneme, and Everett in addition to the container figures from the USWC Big Five ports.
The numbers here confirm a decided shift of U.S. containerized trade back toward America’s West Coast ports. However, we warn that these recent gains in market share by USWC ports are likely to dissipate once the threat of a dockworkers strike along the East and Gulf Coast is lifted and once the Houthi blockade of the Suez Canal is neutralized. Given shifts in worldwide manufacturing, right now could be the highwater mark for the USWC ports’ shares of the nation’s containerized maritime trade.
Exhibit 4 shows a substantial year-over-year boost in the USWC share of all containerized import tonnage flowing into mainland U.S. ports in June. The Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach actually exceeded the share they held in pre-pandemic June 2019. However, on the export side of the trade ledger, the five major USWC ports saw a significant fall-off in their collective share of containerized export tonnage from last June.
Exhibit 5 focuses on the USWC shares of U.S. containerized trade involving trading partners in East Asia. Again, the numbers indicate that the Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach are capturing a larger share of the containerized import tonnage from East Asia. Oakland saw its import tonnage shares edge up slightly from a year earlier, while the Northwest Seaport Alliance Ports of Tacoma and Seattle enjoyed a more appreciable gain. As for export tonnage, this June very nearly mirrored last June’s distribution of shares.
Wine bottle manufacturers in China, Chile and Mexico are looking at new U.S. tariffs that may range as high as 218.15% as the result of Countervailing Duty and Antidumping investigations by the U.S. Commerce Department. To the extent higher duties distort trade, the logistical impact will be felt at border crossings with Mexico and at U.S. West Coast ports, which handled 71.1% of glass wine bottle shipments to the U.S. from China during the first half of this year. Exhibit 6 reveals the breakdown over the past ten years. As Mexico has emerged as an ever-larger supplier of glass wine bottles, the role of Chinese manufacturers has not only fallen off, but the trade has also been rechanneled south, with the San Pedro Bay ports emerging as the preferred point-of-entry. That shift stands out because most of America’s wine is produced in Northern California, a region more immediately in the hinterland of the Port of Oakland.
Japan has long to be loath to accept fresh potato imports from the United States. That has long been a source of irritation to potato growers and their friends in Idaho, where one in every five potatoes is exported.
Perhaps oddly, Japan is already the leading overseas market for frozen U.S. potatoes, the kind used to make French fries and potato chips. But political pressure from Japanese potato growers has kept fresh potatoes out of the country, despite decades of negotiations and the absence of a compelling, science-based justification for the ban.
Data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture show that U.S. potato exports hit a record $2.1 billion in sales in 2022, the latest year for which the USDA has comparable statistics. According to the National Potato Council, exports of fresh potatoes to Japan could add another $150 million to that total.
The U.S. already exports fresh potatoes to countries in the same general neighborhood as Japan, including South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore, Indonesia, the Philippines, Malaysia, and Thailand.
Opening Japan to Idaho potato exporters would also presumably benefit the Northwest Seaport Alliance Ports of Tacoma and Seattle, which currently handle the majority of fresh potato exports going to overseas markets.
Almonds, pistachios, and walnuts rank among California’s Top Five agricultural exports by value.
Other than the overland trade to Canada and Mexico (and a <10.0% share diverted to ports on the East and Gulf Coasts), virtually the state’s tree nut export trade moves through the Ports of Oakland, Long Beach, and Los Angeles. Here’s how exports are faring in the current crop year, which began last September 1 for pistachios and walnuts and on August 1 for almonds.
Almond exports for the 2023-24 crop year which ended on July 31 totaled 1,963,916,713 pounds, a 6.3% gain over the 2022-23 crop year. 73.0% of California almonds were exported in the just concluded crop year. Spain, Germany, the Netherlands, the United Arab Emirates, Turkey, and Morocco were the chief destinations.
Through July, pistachio exports this year have totaled 882,319,358 pounds, up 45.5% from this point last year and 68.1% above the volume exported in the previous crop year. So far this year, 79.2% of the crop has been exported. Only a fraction (4.7%) of pistachio shipments are going to Canada and Mexico. Germany and Turkey each have been importing more California pistachios than are our two immediate neighbors. Spain, India, and Vietnam also rank among the top overseas markets for California’s pistachios.
California Walnut Board numbers show that exports of inshell walnuts in the 2023-24 crop year were up 33.3% through July to 308,439,000 pounds, while exports of shelled walnuts rose by 22.4% to 321,085,000 pounds. All but 5.1% of inshell walnuts were shipped abroad, while 57.2% of shelled walnuts were exported. Germany, Spain, Japan, and South Korea are currently the leading foreign markets for California walnuts.
In the first half of this year, U.S. Commerce Department statistics indicate that, in tonnage terms, the Port of Oakland handled 65.4% of all exports of tree nuts, while the Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach collectively handled an even 25.0%. The remaining 8.7% of the trade sailed from Port Houston, the Port of Virginia, and the Port of Savannah.
There’s been much speculation as to which North American seaports might benefit the most from shippers’ efforts to diversify sourcing away from China. Along now comes an interesting report from the San Francisco Bay Area Council’s Economic Institute declaring that the “worldwide shift of production is fully underway as companies with global operations diversify their sourcing and work to manage risk. A trend for several years, this has become a flow.”
The report attributes the shift to ”less hospitable environment in China and tensions in US-China relations” but also a desire to “reduce dependence on any one country (a problem laid bare by China’s pandemic shutdowns) and a desire to bring production closer to home.”
India, Mexico, and Southeast Asia are cited in the report as the principal beneficiaries of this exercise in resourceful resourcing. According to the Institute, India offers a huge potential market and a deep base of engineers. Vietnam is culturally similar to China, with low costs but a friendlier attitude toward the United States. Mexico features a young working-class population as well as a strong technical workforce. It also enjoys the added benefit of being a partner in the USMCA – the US-Mexico-Canada Agreement – which provides a more secure legal setting for trade and investment. It further has the advantage of the shortest and most secure supply lines possible (a truck across the border) and “a symbiotic binational manufacturing process that also supports jobs in the United States”.
What does this imply for the future of container traffic through those U.S. West Coast ports which have hitherto served as America’s primary gateways for trade with China?
Before calculating which ports will gain or suffer from the diversification of supply chains, a couple of statistics might be in order. Most importantly, while international merchandise trade data are most commonly expressed in dollars, growth in the value of imports from any given do not necessarily correlate with any increase in the number of TEUs used to transport those goods to U.S. markets.
Here are three useful numbers to keep in mind. In dollar terms, 29.0% of America’s merchandise imports through the first half of this year came from Mexico and Canada, and 89.8% of that trade was shipped overland in trucks and by rail. Another 26.1% of the U.S. merchandise import trade so far this year was airborne. Ships calling at U.S. seaports brought in 44.2% of all imported goods, while containerized shipments accounted for 31.7% of all merchandise imports.
Dollar value numbers can be quite misleading when trying to anticipate the number of TEUs that might show up at American ports. Consider, for example, that the ninth largest source of U.S. merchandise imports is -- in dollar terms -- that industrial behemoth Ireland (population: 5.13 million). The “Old Sod” currently ranks between Taiwan (population: 23.57 million) and India (1.42 billion) as the source of the $46.579 billion in merchandise the U.S. imported in this year’s first half. But the majority of that trade (80.1%) is airborne. Indeed, only China ranks higher than Ireland in terms of the value of airborne shipments to the United States.
Ireland’s chief exports are high-value, low-weight pharmaceuticals and medical products. Most of the world’s supply of Botox comes from a factory in County Mayo. So far this year, 45.0% of all imported artificial joints have come from Ireland.
In case some of you were wondering about other exports for which Ireland is known, we have thrown in Exhibit 8, which relates the rise and decline in U.S. imports of Irish beverages in the past decade. COVID-19’s impact on bars and social drinking could not be more manifest. But hold on! Presumably because Irish bars and households across the U.S. are stocking up for what promises to be a fairly turbulent presidential election, whiskey imports from Ireland in the first half of this year are up 28.9% over the same period last year, while imports of Irish stouts and lagers have risen 22.3%. Sláinte!
Moving back to the original topic, Vietnam is frequently cited as a leading beneficiary of the diversification of manufacturing operations outside of China (although ownership often involves Chinese parties). Let’s compare two sets of numbers: the amount of containerized tonnage shipped from Vietnam to U.S. ports over the past ten years and the real dollar value of U.S. imports from Vietnam in that same period. As Exhibit 9 shows, the run-up in containerized tonnage (and the number of TEUs) shipped to U.S. ports from Vietnam exceeded the pace with which the value of those shipments grew.
This comprehensive 52- page report comes from the State Assembly’s Select Committee on Ports and Goods Movement and was released by the panel’s chair, Mike A. Gipson, on July 31. In describing the myriad economic benefits of maintaining competitive ports, the report also delves into the numerous challenges the state’s ports face. It pretty much covers the waterfront. It is available at: https://scpgm.assembly.ca.gov/system/files/2024-08/chairs-report-on-the-select-committe-on-ports-and-goods-movement.pdf.