As the International Longshoremen’s Association strike at East and Gulf Coast ports gets underway, what goods can shippers and consumers expect to miss the most if a work stoppage shutting down container and ro-ro services drags on?
Among the top 10 U.S. import commodities, 62% of all machinery shipments move through East Coast ports, followed by apparel textiles and leather goods, 55%, and 55% of motor vehicles.
The top import through the Port of New York-New Jersey, the second-busiest U.S. container hub, are beverages. Nonalcoholic products were 28% of the port’s total, and 32% of all such beverages are imported into the U.S. by water. Beer is second at 9% and accounts for 35% of all imports. But there’s good news since 79% of beer sold in the U.S. in 2023 was domestically produced.
The port complex imported 403,000 vehicles in 2023, of a nationwide total 6.5 million imports overall. But that pales in comparison to the Port of Baltimore, the leading vehicle import gateway, which handled approximately 850,000 cars and trucks in 2023.
The Port of Wilmington, Delaware, is the top U.S. hub for banana imports thanks to Dole and Chiquita, whose ships call there twice weekly. Wilmington also leads in fresh fruit imports and annually handles 16 million cases of fruit from Chile alone. While the port has 800,000 square feet of dockside cold storage, an extended work stoppage could be disastrous for fresh produce that has to move on schedule from ship to market to table.
In 2023, vaccines and other immunological products were the top import at the Port of Savannah in Georgia, with containerized shipments totaling $9.52 billion. Medium-size cars were next at $9.23 billion, followed by medicaments, $6.08 billion, and large cars, $4.13 billion.
Printing machinery and aircraft parts topped imports at the Port of Virginia in 2023.
Top containerized and ro-ro imports at Port Everglades, Florida, are medical instruments, T-shirts, sweaters, and motor boats and yachts.
Not surprisingly, resins and plastics led containerized imports through the petrochemical hub at the Port of Houston, along with automotive products and apparel.
Find more articles by Stuart Chirls here.
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