The West Coast’s Share of America’s Maritime Trade

Total West Coast Trade

The Pacific Maritime Association (PMA), which represents 71 member companies consisting of shipping lines, terminal operators and stevedores that operate at 29 ports in California, Oregon and the State of Washington. Collectively, these ports handled 29.6% of the $1.218 trillion of nation’s maritime trade through the first half of 2025. At the same time, USWC ports also handled 52.2% of all import tonnage shipped to the U.S. from the factories of East Asia.

According to the PMA’s latest annual report, the 29 USWC ports handled 17,013,315 loaded TEUs. 

The docks in Southern California which handled 67.7% of total tonnage at USWC ports, while ports in Northern California handled 10.7% of coastwide tonnage. In the Pacific Northwest, 8.5% of all USWC tonnage were handled at ports along the Columbia River in Oregon and Washington, while other Washington State ports, chiefly Tacoma and Seattle, handled the remaining 13.1% of USWC maritime tonnage in 2024.

Who Leads in Unloads

We pay a great deal of attention to the volume of loaded shipping containers arriving from abroad. Unless we are involved in agricultural trade, we probably spend much less time on the much smaller volume of loaded export TEUs. And it is even safer to say that hardly anyone gives much mind to inbound empties. Yet these can be a important component of total TEU counts, and the handling of empties and their repositioning can represent a significant part of the containerized ecosystem and its overhead. Exhibit 7 captures the past decade of empty container imports at major U.S. ports.

Along the U.S. West Coast, as Exhibit 8 reveals, what’s perhaps most remarkable has been the difference between the change in position of the two San Pedro Bay ports. The trade in empty inbound boxes has all but abandoned the Port of Los Angeles, otherwise America’s busiest container gateway, and moved across the harbor to the Port of Long Beach.