California Ports, Key to US Supply Chain, Among World’s Least Efficient

Shipping containers are unloaded from ships astatine a instrumentality terminal astatine the Port of Long Beach-Port of Los Angeles analyzable successful Los Angeles, California, connected April 7, 2021. (Lucy Nicholson/Reuters)

LOS ANGELES—Southern California’s Los Angeles and Long Beach ports grip the astir water cargo of immoderate ports successful the United States, but are immoderate of the slightest businesslike successful the world, according to a ranking by the World Bank and IHS Markit.

In a reappraisal of 351 instrumentality ports astir the globe, Los Angeles was ranked 328, down Tanzania’s Dar es Salaam and Alaska’s Dutch Harbor. The adjacent larboard of Long Beach came successful adjacent lower, astatine 333, down Turkey’s Nemrut Bay and Kenya’s Mombasa, the groups said successful their inaugural Container Port Performance Index published successful May.

The full fig of ships waiting to unload extracurricular the 2 adjacent ports deed a caller all-time grounds of 100 connected Monday. Americans’ purchases of imported goods person jumped to levels the U.S. supply concatenation infrastructure can’t handle, causing transportation delays and snarls.

Top larboard honors went to Japan’s Yokohama and Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah connected the ranking.

Ports successful Asia, the Middle East and North Africa dominated the apical 50 spots, portion conscionable 4 U.S. ports cracked the apical 100—Philadelphia (83), the Port of Virginia (85), New York & New Jersey (89), and Charleston, South Carolina (95).

The COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted commercialized astir the globe, snarling commercialized and exposing the frailty of a proviso concatenation built for predictable, just-in-time question of goods.

The United States is the world’s biggest consumer, importing goods valued astatine astir $2.5 trillion a year.

Biden is pushing larboard executives, labour national leaders and large retailers similar Walmart to onslaught shipping hurdles that are driving up the terms of goods and raising the hazard of merchandise shortages during the vacation season.

Southern California larboard executives are coaxing terminal operators, importers, truckers, railroads, dock workers, and warehouse owners to follow 24/7 operations successful a bid to wide clogs that person backed up dozens of ships offshore and delayed deliveries to stores and e-commerce fulfillment centers.