Ports of Long Beach and Los Angeles

The twin ports on the US west coast have been the most heavily affected in North America.

They are the two busiest ports in the country, as shown by a previous PTI insight, and are crucial to US trade with China.

Both Los Angeles and Long Beach saw their year-on-year (YoY) traffic drop substantially in January 2020 – 5.4% and 4.6% respectively. They are the ports most affected by coronavirus in North America, although cases are growing in other west coast hubs and New York.

Those figures came amid warnings from Fitch Ratings that world trade will be severely damaged if coronavirus doesn’t abate.

The Port of Los Angeles’ executive director, Gene Seroka, predicted that the economic slowdown would be worse than that caused by the SARS virus in 2002-2003, in an interview with CNBC in February.

Seroka also foresaw a YoY drop of as much 25% in February and 15% for the first quarter of 2020. However, in contrast, Seroka’s counterpart at the Port of Long Beach predicted that traffic would increase in the next 12 months.

Traffic continued to drop in February 2020, at Los Angeles by 22.9% and Long Beach 9.8%. In comments PTI reported on, Seroka predicted March would also be soft as the recovery of China’s factories remains slow.

https://www.porttechnology.org/news/which-ports-have-been-most-affected-by-coronavirus/