Port of L.A. Tallies Second-Busiest Year on Record in 2024
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The busiest U.S. seaport finished 2024 with near-record trade volumes as tariff uncertainty and supply chain diversions brought a sustained wave of imports through Southern California.
Cargo handlers at the Port of Los Angeles moved 10.3 million containers in 2024, marking the trade hub’s second-best year, Executive Director Gene Seroka said Jan. 23. That’s a roughly 20% increase in volume over 2023 and “the largest incremental year-on-year gain that we’ve ever seen,” he said. The port's busiest year came in 2021 when it moved 10.7 million containers.
Speaking at a “State of the Port” event in Long Beach, Seroka attributed the container surge in L.A. to diversions related to attacks on shipping vessels in the Red Sea, drought-related reductions in capacity at the Panama Canal, and uncertainty around a now-resolved labor dispute at East and Gulf coast ports.
Seroka
While there are signs that recent causes of supply chain stress are letting up, businesses across the world are braced for an escalation of the trade war President Donald Trump began during his first term.
“In Washington, the new administration is talking about more tariffs and trade constraints,” Seroka said. “This post-globalization era is creating new headwinds that we must navigate.”
Next door, the Port of Long Beach reported its busiest year ever in 2024, moving 9.6 million 20-foot equivalent units. Last month, Long Beach handled nearly 413,000 TEUs of imported cargo, more than in any other December.
The L.A. and Long Beach ports — which together account for roughly a third of all U.S. containerized imports — handled roughly 10,086,000 TEUs combined of imported goods last year, just 9,000 containers shy of the record set in 2021, when pandemic-era consumer demand snarled supply chains across the globe.
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