Monitoring US ports as dockworkers' strike threatens to rekindle inflation

Potentially inflationary supply-chain disruptions have returned to the US after thousands of dockworkers went on strike. The International Longshoremen's Association vowed Tuesday to shut East Coast and Gulf Coast ports until its demands are met.

To keep an eye on how this labor dispute might impact the local and global economy, CEIC users can monitor daily and weekly port activity data sourced by Marine Traffic.

Our first chart tracks arrivals at five key Atlantic Ocean ports hit by the strikes: New York, Houston, Norfolk, Charleston and Savannah. These are not just domestically prominent facilities, but have systemic importance for global trade: the publication Lloyd's List includes them in its Top 100 container ports.

However, as our second chart shows, the busiest US port (according to weekly congestion data) is on the other side of the country: Seattle, which had a total of 8,812 calls from January through September. (A port call is defined as a record of a vessel arriving at or departing from a given port.)

The Pacific ports are not subject to the strike, and shippers are bracing for even more congestion on the West Coast as goods get diverted.

The rest of the ports in the top 5 are all on the East Coast. The second-busiest is Houston, which mostly services the petroleum industry. The Texas port had 6,072 calls from January through the end of September.

Our third chart aggregates US traffic to show how 2024 has been a notably robust year for port activity -- and, by extension, US trade. The current year has outperformed the previous four; as expected, the pandemic lull of 2020 is the outlier.

Shipping disruptions were a key driver of inflation during the pandemic as supply chains fragmented for industrial and consumer goods. As this strike threatens to make shipping more expensive at a time when Middle East geopolitical tensions have already stressed key trade routes, Marine Traffic's data allows CEIC users to get a sense of any disruptions in real time.

Marine Traffic offers daily data for port arrivals and departures for the Lloyd's 100. It tracks weekly congestion data (combining arrivals and departures) for a much larger set of ports -- more than 3,000 globally in more than 200 countries; further breakdowns are available by vessel type. And it also feeds into our trade nowcasts. We invite you to visit our dashboard on this source of shipping data.

CEIC users can also explore the world of container shipping with monthly data from the Institute of Shipping Economics and Logistics. Our final pie chart uses this data source to demonstrate the relative importance of US container ports. Los Angeles and neighboring Long Beach have the biggest slices, with the port of New York and New Jersey just behind. Combined, these three facilities handle more than half of the containers traveling to or from the US.

If you are a CEIC user, access the story here.