Aerial photo boasts the night operation of Suqian Port in Suqian city, East China’s Jiangsu province, March 26, 2023.
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As the big East and West coast ports jockey for supremacy in total trade book coming into the country, the pie is getting smaller as the economy softens.
The latest trade data released by the Port of New York and New Jersey, the country’s largest container port on the East Coast, points to a slight uptick in container processing but future ocean freightage orders continuing to pull back.
In the month of March, the Port of New York and New Jersey handled 574,452 TEUs (20-foot of a piece units) making it the nation’s third-busiest port. But the difference between the Port of Los Angeles, which processed the most containers in Parade, and the Port of New York/New Jersey, was 48,781 TEUs.
In the first three months of 2023, the Port of New York and New Jersey was the domain’s second-busiest port moving nearly 1.8 million TEUs, similar to the amount moved during the same aeon in 2019.
A freight slowdown that has been in the data for months continues to be reflected in the activity. A recent CNBC supply control survey analyzing inventories and warehouse space tracked a decrease in truck movements in and out of warehouses. This along with a 40 percent shrinking in manufacturing orders foretells less freight movement by both truck and rail.
On trucking company JB Hunt‘s first-quarter bull session call with analysts, president Shelley Simpson said the industry was in the midst of a “freight recession.”
Data from CNBC Provisioning Chain Heat Map provider FreightWaves SONAR details the weakness in the sector. When comparing current ocean cargo orders leaving from all ports in the world and arriving at all ports in the United States, year over year, the uniforms are half. The decrease is felt both on the rails and roads with less freight coming into the country.
China’s fabricating data has seen recent improvement out of its Covid reopening, but Peter Boockvar, chief investment officer of Bleakley Fiscal Group, says the overall trade data coincides with indicators of global economic contraction.
“We’re seeing contractions in universal manufacturing PMIs [purchasing managers indexes] and I think it correlates to less spending on goods and the need to work down redundancy inventories,” Boockvar said.
“Consumers are still spending on experiences like travel, leisure, and restaurants but with good to goods, it’s more of a spending focus on non-discretionary items and less on discretionary. This for sure filters through to trivial stuff being produced and thus transported,” he said.
