Maritime Insights

Learn how the maritime industry is protecting endangered whales through voluntary vessel speed reduction partnerships that have reduced ship-strike risks, cut harmful emissions, and strengthened collaboration among carriers, regulators, and California environmental programs.

Discover how the Port of Los Angeles set a record with more than 920 attendees at the 11th Annual State of the Port event, where industry leaders gathered to discuss robust 2025 cargo performance, major growth strategies, sustainability initiatives, and future infrastructure investments to strengthen America’s busiest seaport.

Explore how the Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach closed out 2025 with historic achievements—record cargo volumes, operational efficiency gains, and leading environmental performance across the nation’s busiest seaport complex despite market volatility and trade uncertainty.

Analyze the latest U.S. West Coast container trade data showing how the Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, while still consolidating Pacific trade, saw shifts in their share of national containerized import and export tonnage through October 2025 amid broader coastal market dynamics and China trade turbulence.

Unpack the latest maritime data in “Thank Heavens for Scrap Paper,” exploring collapsing electric vehicle export volumes, shifts in containerized freight patterns, and how scrap paper tonnage trends are reshaping port traffic and supply chain dynamics in early 2026.

Explore how containerized trade between the U.S. and China has steadily declined over the past decade—dropping China’s share of inbound and outbound tonnage at major U.S. West Coast ports—and what this shift reveals about tariffs, supply chains, and evolving global trade patterns.

Get the latest data on December 2025 container traffic across North American seaports, including TEU volumes at major gateways like Los Angeles, Long Beach, Oakland, Vancouver, and Prince Rupert, year-over-year trends, and insights into annual totals and regional performance.

By Daniel Parayes-Montoya, Public Policy Institute of California

Understand how California’s international trade is evolving in 2025 despite tariff-driven uncertainty—with steady import/export totals, shifting partnerships (Mexico overtaking China), and varied sector trends shaping the Golden State’s trade outlook.

Dive into comprehensive November 2025 container traffic statistics across North America’s major ports—including the Ports of Los Angeles, Long Beach, Oakland, New York/New Jersey and others—with year-over-year TEU trends, regional volume shifts, and broader trade patterns shaping the end of the year.

Explore the actual November TEU tallies reported by major North American ports, revealing variations in container volume performance, year-over-year comparisons, and how key gateways are navigating evolving trade conditions in late 2025.

Learn how California’s inland waterways—critical channels connecting the Sacramento and Stockton deep-water ports to the Pacific—face infrastructure challenges like severe shoaling, aging bridges, and insufficient dredging funding that threaten navigation, ag-export flows and foreign trade worth millions annually.

By Mike Jacob, President, Pacific Merchant Shipping Association

Examine how 2025’s intermodal system shocks—rail bottlenecks, shifting carriage patterns, and coast-to-coast network constraints—may be reinforcing the pandemic-era divergence in volume and efficiency between U.S. West Coast ports and their inland/Atlantic counterparts. (pmsaship.com)

By Jock O’Connell, Economist

Explore how America’s containerized export trade is facing a crisis amid slowing globalization—examining declining export volumes, shifting global demand patterns, and structural challenges reshaping U.S. supply chains and port competitiveness.