In another sign of how deep the global recession has become, the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach on Friday reported their worst combined import statistics for September in nine years.
September is often the busiest month at the nation's biggest port complex, making it one of the best barometers of the health of the economy and international trade.
The port of Los Angeles received 309,078 containers packed with imported goods in September, representing a decline of 16% from the same month last year and 27% from September 2006, L.A.'s best month ever for imports. Long Beach received 224,924 import containers in September, a drop of 19% from a year earlier and 32% from September 2007, the port's best September ever.
For the first nine months of the year, imports, exports and empty containers through the port of Los Angeles were down 16% at just under 5 million containers while the Long Beach port saw a decline of nearly 25% at just under 3.7 million containers, compared with the same period last year.
As dismal as those figures are for the two ports, which rank first and second in the U.S. in container volume and together rank fifth in the world, a greater worry goes beyond the immediate and substantial loss of local trade-related jobs: Some of the ports' most important tenants were so poorly positioned for the downturn that they might sink completely in a sea of billions of dollars of red ink, experts say.
"Without a doubt, the Southern California ports should be worried," said Neil Dekker, an analyst at Drewry Shipping Consultants in London who produces container industry forecasts. "Companies will go bust; freight rates may take years to recover."
The outlook could hardly be more ominous, said John Husing, an independent analyst with Economics and Politics Inc. in Redlands who follows the effects of global trade on the Inland Empire.
Seeing nothing but smooth sailing ahead for the globalization that has reshaped international trade, the world's shipping lines committed themselves years into the future to orders for new container ships that have as much as 69% more cargo carrying capacity than the vessels that were the world's largest in 2004, Husing said.
He described it as "the worst recession in modern times hitting an industry that was geared for the opposite of what they are facing."
