Port of LA Executive Director Gene Seroka discussed the shift in cargo market share that has been taking cargo to other ports during a presentation to the Los Angeles harbor commissioners on Thursday, Oct. 19.
The trend isn’t new but poses major challenges to the twin ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach. The causes are complex and solutions are not easy or quickly available, Seroka told commissioners at their regular meeting.
In 2007, he said, five large container ports on the West Coast — Los Angeles, Long Beach, Seattle, Tacoma and Oakland — had 76% of the Trans-Pacific cargo business.
“Today that’s 58%,” Seroka said, “a loss of 25% of the market share.”
And that, he said, translates to jobs that are provided through the port.
Closer to home, he said, in just the Los Angeles-Long Beach port complex, those numbers also saw a 25% decline in market share.
At the same time, gains have been made at ports on the Gulf and East coasts, which have been aggressively expanding infrastructure and have lobbied for — and received — federal funding for that from Washington, D.C.
The fastest-growing port in the U.S. is in Savannah, Georgia, Seroka said, citing data from the Pacific Merchant Shipping Association.
The drivers behind the loss of cargo on the West Coast, he said, are several, such as the high cost of doing business in California — including because of environmental regulations — and what is often the “heavy hand” of regulatory agencies.
The pandemic backup and a lengthy labor contract process — which sparked fears of a work stoppage — added to some cargo migrating east in more recent years.
But cargo volume at the ports, Seroka added, is still expected to double by the year 2040, creating a push to use the land and operation more efficiently. Bigger ships will be part of what will be coming over the next decades.
While recent months have generally seen a decline in cargo, September saw reasons for optimisim in the…
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