United States Freight Transport Report Q4 2009

Representatives from the US West Coast ports of Los Angeles, Long Beach, Tacoma, Seattle and Portland appealed to US Congress for financial support to stem falling trade volumes from Asia. West Coast ports have seen throughout volumes decline in recent years as they face increasing competition from Ports in Canada and Mexico and from the Panama and Suez Canals. According to Washington's News Tribune, West Coast port authorities are seeking a bill to increase investment in the intermodal links that connect the ports to the country's main inland ports in the Mid West. Increased funding will improve the speed and efficiency of transporting goods via the US coast and overland and increase the ports' competitiveness. Director of the Port of Tacoma, Tim Farrell, said, 'we need a well-thought-out, strategic freight policy…we need to focus on corridors from Shanghai to Chicago or Tokyo to Houston'.

Pacific coast ports are the traditional route of entry for US Asian imports with more than 70% of transpacific shipments reaching US markets via the West Coast. Major ports such as Los Angeles and Long Beach have become a victim of their own success in recent years - despite their size, they have struggled to cope with growing cargo volumes - the result of the growth of China's export sector and rising US demand for Chinese goods.

This latest issue of BMI’s US Transport Report predicts that over the 2009-2013 forecast period, overall freight carried across all transport modes will grow by an annual average of 1.2%, measured in million tonnes-km (mntkm). This will lag predicted economic growth which we see averaging 1.4%. Both numbers have been pulled down by the recession that we see as being the dominant story of 2009-2010 .

By transport mode, we see growth being led by rail freight (1.6% per annum), followed by airfreight (1.4%), road haulage (1.2%), shipping (0.9%) and pipeline throughput (0.7%). Companies will be monitoring the fall in demand for freight to assess when the bottom of the cycle has been reached and when to anticipate a possible recovery. We expect transport and communications GDP to grow to US$1.143trn by 2013, representing 6.6% of US GDP .

The protectionist trend in US freight transport first hit the headlines early in 2006, when US Congress broke ranks with President George W. Bush and successfully opposed the sale of a controlling interest in six key ports (including New York, Philadelphia, and Miami) to Dubai Ports World (DPW) on security grounds. Under intense political pressure DPW, which acquired the ports through its takeover of Londonbased Peninsular & Oriental (P&O), then agreed to sell its US interests to a third party, an American International Group (AIG) unit. Similar protectionist trends have shown up in the aviation sector, where Congress and trade unions held back plans to give foreign investors a greater say in the running of USbased airlines. At the beginning of 2009 another international player, Deutsche Post-owned DHL, withdrew from the domestic US express delivery market after years of losses. Congress also rejected long-standing proposals to allow Mexican trucks to deliver cargo across the US. The exception, perhaps because it has gone largely unnoticed, has been road transport, where a series of foreign toll-road operators have been buying large stakes in US roads. But here too there are signs of greater caution. BMI believes the Obama government remains under continuing pressure to take a protectionist stance on a range of trade and transport issues, but since taking office has shown itself minded to hold back from moving too far in that direction .

As the largest economy in the world, it could be argued that there is already enough internally-generated competitive drive in the US freight business. BMI disagrees, taking the view that even major US companies could improve their performance by being exposed to greater external competition. Major US airlines have, despite some exceptions and recent improvements, piled up massive losses and have been in and out of bankruptcy protection. There has been a notorious lack of new investment in the country’s pipeline and refinery infrastructure, exposed during Hurricane Katrina .