The Ups/Downs of USWC Shares of Recent U.S. Container Trade

As Exhibit 4 reveals, the past two years have witnessed substantial and abrupt shifts in the U.S. West Coast’s shares of America’s inbound container traffic. These shifts started in October 2023, when Houthi attacks on vessels in the Red Sea began to affect the routing of containerized goods being transported to American ports from South and East Asia. By the early summer of 2024, the shippers had to contend with the risk that a labor dispute might close East and Gulf Coast ports in the fall. and the lingering effects of a sustained drought in Panama that impacted some Panama Canal transits. As a result, the USWC share of all U.S. inbound container tonnage rose, especially in the second half of 2024, before hitting a high of 39.3% in January 2025. Uncertainties over U.S. tariffs and U.S. economic expansion made for sharp swings in U.S. trade for the balance of 2025 to date, as importers alternated between surging shipments and tapping the brakes as inventories soared and then increasing import orders as the end-of-year shopping season neared. By July, the latest month for which comparable data are available, the USWC shares of both the value and tonnage of all U.S. containerized imports had swept up again to levels commensurate with a year earlier.    

Exhibit 4. USWC Monthly Shares of U.S. Containerized Imports

Exhibit 5 illustrates the simultaneous experience with the USWC shares of containerized imports from East Asia. In January of this year, USWC ports handled 67.1% of the value of containerized imports from East Asia and a 57.4% tonnage share. Following a spring swoon, the USWC ports’ shares picked again this past summer as importers again rushed to get ahead of threatened higher tariffs on Chinese-made goods along with products manufactured in Chinese-owned factories in third countries.

Exhibit 5. USWC Monthly Shares of U.S. Containerized Imports from East Asia