On January 9th, we completed the data for December in our U.S. Customs trade data tool,
TradeIQ. Total shipments in December fell by 8.48% from November, and grew 3.68% over the previous year. Shipments to West Coast ports showed the greatest decrease of 11.50% while the East Coast dropped 5.05% and the Gulf's traffic grew 3.16% from November.
Below is a table showing port regions of the world where shipments originated:
| Port Region |
Dec 2010
Shipments |
Percent Change
over Nov 2010 |
Percent Change
over Dec 2009 |
| Asia |
486,679 |
-9.52% |
4.01% |
| Europe |
99,690 |
-11.95% |
3.26% |
| Central America (includes Mexico) |
43,546 |
4.62% |
-1.61% |
| South America |
20,091 |
3.08% |
12.90% |
| Unknown |
7,763 |
-7.87% |
-4.36% |
| Australia, New Zealand and Oceania |
4,930 |
20.86% |
-2.43% |
North America
|
4,026 |
4.90% |
10.73% |
| Africa |
3,553 |
-6.67% |
12.40% |
| Total |
670,278 |
-8.48% |
3.68% |
When looking at all of 2010, shipments were up 14.19% over 2009. However, taking a larger view of the data, 2008 still eclipsed 2010 by 0.82%. 2010 will be remembered for a return to normalcy in the container shipping industry as retailers regained confidence in consumers and manufacturers finally began to ramp back up production. Both of these factors pushed imports back toward prerecession levels. Container ports in the United States welcomed these developments, but some have fared better in the recovery than others. Below is a trend of the top 5 U.S. ports' TEU totals over the last 5 years:
Methodology:
Zepol's data is derived from Bills of Lading entered into the Automated Manifest System. This information represents the number of House manifests entered by importers of waterborne containerized goods. This is the earliest indicator for trade data available for the previous month’s import activity. The data excludes shipments from empty containers, excludes shipments labeled as freight remaining on board, and may contain other data anomalies.