As Shanghai, home to the world’s busiest harbour, returns from a two-month COVID-19 shutdown, California port officials expect imports to climb. According to them and other analysts, the concern is whether the release of pent-up goods will once again flood West Coast ports that have recently recovered from the pandemic’s big cargo wave.
Despite the fact that the Shanghai Port was operational throughout the city’s lockdown, cargo flows slowed. Factories in the area that produce everything from Tesla electric automobiles to Apple computers ran out of parts, causing some truckers to be stranded.
As the city returns to normal, trade should follow.
“We will have some form of a surge, given the delay of cargo volume from Shanghai and China overall,” Mario Cordero, executive director of the Port of Long Beach, said on the sidelines of a Reuters Events logistics conference in Chicago.
“To what extent that surge will be remains to be seen,” Cordero said.
The Los Angeles/Long Beach port complex is the busiest in the United States. The Port of Shanghai is its second-biggest source of container trade cargo, behind Port of Shenzen.
When Shanghai closed, some factories there re-routed goods to other ports that trade with Southern California.
April imports soared 9.2% to a new monthly record at the Port of Long Beach.
“The question is – but for lockdowns and slowdowns, what would have been that percentile?” said Cordero. He expects the Shanghai surge to begin this month – landing alongside back-to-school goods, Fall fashions and early Christmas shipments.
April imports fell 6.8% at the Port of Los Angeles, giving it a chance to prepare for the Shanghai uptick. The port thinned its cargo backlog and cut the queue of ships waiting to unload to about two dozen – the lowest number in about a year, Executive Director Gene Seroka, said in a telephone interview.
