美西港口拥堵余波未平

West Coast hangover

虽然太平洋海事协会已与国际码头仓储工人联盟达成协议,美国西海岸港口的拥堵问题仍然难以解决,继续影响着泛太平洋航线的发展前景。

Even with an ILWU agreement, lingering congestion dampens the trans-Pacific trade outlook. The economic fundamentals of the trans-Pacific trade are getting stronger, setting the stage for what would normally generate a strong growth in container volumes, especially in the eastbound trade. But this isn't a normal year. The work slowdowns at West Coast ports and the resulting congestion are dampening the outlook for the trade, even with the tentative agreement the International Longshore and Warehouse Union and Pacific Maritime Association reached on Feb. 20.It will take months to work off the long queues of container ships and stacks of outbound export containers at the ports. Although U.S. importers have shifted significant amounts of import cargo to the all-water route to U.S. East and Gulf Coast ports or through Canada and Mexico, their supply chains have been disrupted and costs inflated as carrier reliability plummeted. U.S. exporters that have seen their food exports rot on West Coast docks, meanwhile,may have lost market share to other global sources. Add it up,and the congestion is costing importers and exporters millions of dollars.Although it has created chaos for shippers, port congestion hasn't been all bad for carriers in the short term. It has helped them absorb excess vessel capacity as they deployed ships to replace those anchored off the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach waiting to unload their cargo. Spot rates from Asia to the U.S. East Coast in the run-up to the Feb. 19 Chinese New Year were almost double those at the same time last year as shipperssought alternate routes through the Suez and Panama canals. Spot rates to the West Coast were up about 10 percent.