Shifting Coastal Shares of U.S. Containerized Import Traffic
Shifting Coastal Shares of U.S. Containerized Import Traffic
Exhibit 6 tracks the shifting coastal shares of U.S. containerized imports that was occasioned by the threat of the closure of East and Gulf Coast ports. Data compiled by U.S. Customs and Border Protection indicate that U.S. West Coast ports’ share of the nation’s containerized import traffic declined in February in terms of both value and tonnage from the previous month. USWC ports’ collective shares of U.S. containerized imports from all overseas trading partners dropped to 42.7% by value and to 36.8% by weight. Those were the lowest shares held by USWC ports since the spring of 2024.
The March fall-off was mirrored in the statistics on how containerized imports from East Asia were distributed among the nation’s seaports. As Exhibit 7 reveals, the USWC share of containerized imports from East Asia declined in March to 63.2% in value and to 5.8% in tonnage. Both were the lowest shares held by USWC ports since last spring.
Exports by Mode of Transport in 2024
Early each month, the Foreign Trade Division of the U.S. Census Bureau, an agency of the United States Department of Commerce, issues the federal government’s official international trade statistics. Typically, the numbers are released about five weeks after the month for which the data is being reported. This is in contrast to official Chinese trade statistics, which are available almost instantaneously, almost as if to suit pre-determined goals.
So, on April 2, the U.S. trade statistics for February were released, showing that the value of U.S. merchandise exports in the year’s shortest month amounted to $167.609 billion. Of that total, $54.679 billion, or 32.6% of the value of all goods shipped abroad departed by air, while $56.349 billion in merchandise or 33.6% of all exports, was transported by sea. (Mineral Fuels accounted for nearly forty percent of waterborne exports.) Most of the remaining 33.7% of U.S. exports traveled overland to Mexico and Canada, America’s two largest trading partners. (For those counting boxes, 14.0% of the value of the nation’s entire merchandise export trade was shipped from U.S. ports in containers.)