Michael Stolarcyzk runs a great blog called Blogonlog which covers the logistics and supply chain space. Michael is also a colleague of mine who works for DHL's Exel Supply Chain unit. He has tremendous experience in international supply chain and is a Maersk Line alum. That gives Mike a particularly good spin on what's happening in the container trades.
Michaels clipped article below is cogent relative to inbound maritime traffic in the Asia eastbound trade to the United States. While traffic may be dropping some due to currency fluctuation and economic conditions in the US, other factors like green strategies by the SoCal port authorities are raising the cost of importing.
Those factors may further impede traffic growth, or more likely will lead to traffic diversion away from Southern California despite fewer overall containers coming inbound.
Retail Container Traffic Is Falling...
As discussed previously, within this blog...we have plenty of big ships...but the market will not have the space/container demands matching the the past few years. Traffic at U.S. ports that handle most of the nation's retail traffic fell below last year's levels for the fourth month in a row in November, estimates the National Retail Federation and the economic consulting firm Global Insight.
They produce the monthly "Port Tracker" report, and attribute the decrease to careful management of inventories by retailers in anticipation of a restrained holiday shopping season.
"The slow pace of container traffic growth is forecast to continue due to weakness in the U.S. economy," said Paul Bingham, Global Insight economist. "All covered U.S. ports are operating without congestion from the harbors to the gates and are rated low for congestion through spring."
"Retailers are carefully managing their inventories so that they won't be forced into unplanned discounts," said Jonathan Gold, NRF vice president for supply chain and customs policy. "Matching supply to demand is a basic principle of sound business practices."
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