OAKLAND — Inbound cargo traffic at all West Coast ports foundered during March, according to a forbidding new report that sketches out fresh evidence of the economic effects of the coronavirus.
Volumes for cargo headed into the Port of Oakland, along with the ports in Los Angeles, Long Beach, Seattle, and Tacoma, were torpedoed last month, a report released by the Pacific Merchant Shipping Association, or PMSA, showed.
Inbound loads coming into the Oakland port fell by 10.3 percent during March compared with the same month the year before, the PMSA disclosed, citing a report prepared by Global Port Tracker.
Long Beach suffered the least of the West Coast ports. Inbound traffic fell 5 percent at Long Beach in March compared with March 2019.
The western ports that fared far worse when comparing last month to the same month in 2019: In March, inbound traffic plunged 25.9 percent at Los Angeles and by 28.2 percent at the Seattle-Tacoma port complex, the PMSA said.
“Perhaps remarkably, things were even worse at the Gulf and East Coast ports,” the PMSA stated.
In March compared with March 2019, inbound loads tumbled 19.4 percent at the Port of Houston, 18.1 percent at Charleston, and 21.1 percent at Savannah.
“Ghastly numbers” are predicted for the months ahead, the association warned in its report.
That’s because while manufacturing has ramped up in China, business lockdowns mandated by state and local government agencies have hobbled economic output, crippled consumer demand, and forced at least 22 million U.S. residents to lose their jobs.
“Depressed levels of import activity are likely to persist for at least several months,” the PMSA report stated. “Global Port Tracker foresees double-digit declines in every month through August.”
