Once the main entry point for goods flowing into the Northeast, Midwest, and Canadian markets, in recent years the Port of New York/New Jersey has been eclipsed by the growth of West Coast ports like Long Beach and Los Angeles as the main gateways for goods from Asia. Until 1985 the New York port was the busiest in the world, the New York Times reported. Today it is ranked 15th.

“It is unclear whether it will make good on plans to recapture its historic role as the dominant hub for the Midwest and Canada, or slide back to what it was becoming two decades ago: a narrower gateway serving mostly the Northeast,” wrote Eric Lipton in a November 22 Times article on the port’s expansion.

The flow of consumer goods from China has increased dramatically, at a 17 percent annual growth rate since 1994. Today, Wal-Mart stores, the largest retail chain in the United States, has 70 percent of its inventory manufactured there, a total of $18 billion in goods last year, and that rate has increased annually.

The Western harbors have taken the lion’s share of the Asian import boom because it has been faster to ship goods from those ports overland to the East Coast than to take the “all water” route through the Panama Canal. Once offloaded at the Western ports, the double-stacked containers make their way by train to U.S. cities in the East and Midwest in about 19 days from start to finish, as opposed to the 35-day trip that the overseas route meant just five years ago.

With the development of faster cargo ships, made to barely squeeze their way—with inches to spare—through the locks of the Panama Canal, the time it takes to go direct from China to New York has been cut in the last five years to as little as 22 days. This is $300 to $600 less expensive per container than the overland route. So while 65 percent of the goods shipped from China still arrive at Western ports, that figure marks a considerable drop from the 86 percent share in 1999. The share coming through New York and other eastern cities, on the other hand, has increased from about 10 percent to 35 percent in the same period.

“You want to go where the people are,” Richard Markovich told the New York Times. Markovich is the director of international logistics at Michaels, a chain of 850 arts and crafts stores. The Northeastern region is the largest commercial marketplace in the world, “where some 80 million people live within a 24-hour truck trip,” the Times noted. Two years ago, Michaels opened a massive warehouse in Hazleton, Pennsylvania, to bring its products in through the New York harbor to the Northeast region. A number of other retail chains have followed suit.

The boom has fueled an increase in hiring at the ports. The Times reports that 3,500 dock workers have been hired in the last five years in New York, along with thousands of truck drivers, railroad workers, warehouse stockers, and other workers involved in the port’s operations.

Since 1990 the longshore workers have labored under a two-tier contract. With the flood of new hires, now more than half work at the lower, second-tier rate. The bosses have also increased their profit margins through mechanization. The number of workers on the docks has shrunk from 39,000 in 1955 to about 5,500 today, as containerization and other innovations, along with speed-up, have dramatically increased productivity.

The center of the Port of New York/New Jersey’s activity is in New Jersey, at Port Newark and the Elizabeth-Port Authority Marine Terminal. Unlike New York’s Brooklyn waterfront and Hudson piers, the New Jersey wharves are serviced by direct, nationwide rail links and highways. A multi-billion dollar reconstruction is underway at the ports and in the waterways that ships must navigate to reach them. The projects will more than triple the number of containers that can be moved by train and the number of trucks that move in and out daily. A round-the-clock dredging project is underway to make the channels that service the port deeper to accommodate modern cargo ships, and new cranes and other equipment are being installed.

The expansion of East Coast trade is having a similar impact in other ports along the coast, like those in Norfolk, Virginia, and Savannah, Georgia.

The Panamanian government—which has had formal control over the Panama Canal since 1999— is considering a plan to expand the waterway to accommodate even more ship traffic. More goods flowed through the canal during the 2004 fiscal year than ever before in its history. The Panama Canal Authority, reported the Times, “will most likely ask Panama this year to schedule a referendum on the plan.” Such an expansion would cost billions and take more than a decade to complete.  
 
 
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