The busiest maritime trade complex in the U.S. continued to move near-record levels of imports in October, as businesses bring goods in ahead of potential tariff increases and seek to avoid labor-related disruptions at alternate ports.
“The Port of Los Angeles handled a robust 905,000 container units in October,” Executive Director Gene Seroka told reporters on November 20. That’s a 25% gain over last year and is the first time the port handled more than 900,000 containers for four months in a row.
“Los Angeles processed more cargo between July and October than we did during our peak year in 2021 or our second-best year in 2022,” Seroka said.
Imports at the Port of Los Angeles in October landed at 462,740 20-foot container equivalent units (TEUs). The port also handled 122,716 export containers and 319,570 empty containers for the month, according to port data.
Next door, the Port of Long Beach moved nearly 1 million import, export and empty containers in October, beating a record set just two months ago.
This year, the LA and Long Beach ports, which together account for roughly a third of all U.S. container imports, have seen their busiest ever peak season, which began earlier — and has lasted longer — than is typical.
The Southern California ports moved a combined 950,303 import containers in October, just shy of the 980,450 TEU record set in May 2021, when pandemic-era demand for consumer goods and supply chain snarls caused a massive backlog of ships offshore and a pileup of containers on the docks.
The people and companies that make up every link of the supply chain have spent the last two weeks since the U.S. election wondering whether President-elect Donald Trump will follow through fully on threats to hike levies on imports from China — and impose universal tariffs on goods from everywhere else. As a result, businesses are poised to continue bringing in larger volumes of goods through the end of the year, normally a quieter time for the ports.
Companies have also diverted some cargo to the West Coast to avoid potential disruption at East and Gulf ports, where a dispute between dockworkers and their employers is still unresolved.
A three-day strike shut ports from Houston to Boston in early October, and there’s a possibility of a second walkout at eastern ports early next year if the International Longshoremen’s Association can’t reach a contract agreement with the U.S. Maritime Alliance before January 15.
In addition to mitigating the risk from tariffs and labor concerns, Seroka said he expects the healthy U.S. economy and consumer demand to keep trade volumes in LA elevated through the end of the year.
“Considering all this, I see our November volume coming in around 850,000 TEUs, which is stronger than what we traditionally see at this time of the year,” Seroka said. “To close out 2024, the Port of Los Angeles is on track to hit 10 million TEUs for only the second time in our 116 year history.”
