Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis recently suggested that his state’s ports be used as alternatives to jammed ports in California to help ease supply chain issues, but could that solution really work?
Christopher S. Tang, Senior Associate Dean of Global Initiatives at the University of California at Los Angeles Anderson School and Faculty Director of UCLA Center for Global Management, told Audacy Tuesday that Florida ports could actually help ease supply chain woes. However, he explained that it would take careful coordination.
"There are challenges,” he said.
The first challenge is the route ships would take to get to Florida ports. Most shipping container vessels that arrive at California ports such as the Port of Los Angeles depart from Asia, said Trang. To get to Florida from a similar route to the one they typically take from Asia, those ships would have to go through the Panama Canal.
While the Panama Canal was widened in 2016, there are limits to the ship size it could handle and increased traffic could lead to a problem similar to the Suez Canal blockage earlier this year, Tang said. Ships could also reroute to the East Coast, though that would extend trips to and from the U.S. by two weeks, he added.
“That is a lot of time, and also a lot of cost,” he said.
For ships that have already made their way to California at the backed-up ports, it’s too late, Tang said. Florida is only an option for ships currently planning to depart from Asia.
“For those ships that are already in Long Beach, it’s too late,” he said. “Once the boat stops and you start the engine and reroute it, it’s actually much more complicated than you think.”
At Florida ports such as the Jacksonville Port Authority, they would face another problem since those ports are smaller than their California counterparts, said Tang. He said that Los Angeles and Long Beach alone handle 40 percent of all the imports into the U.S. overall.
In addition to having less traffic, Florida’s ports may not have sufficient connections with rail and other transport, Tang told Audacy.
“They’re not geared up for this kind of volume,” he said.
Despite these challenges, Tang does think that diverting some shipments to Florida could improve the backup in California. In fact, he suggests letting select boats take the long way to Florida so the ports have time to get ready for the increased traffic.
“The time from Shanghai to Miami or to Jacksonville would take 30 days,” said Tang. “That means that the ports would have more leeway, more time to prepare for the bigger boats to arrive.”
Tang said that this would have to be coordinated based both on what is being shipped from Asia and what the U.S. is sending back.
“We also need to keep in mind what the ships do after they drop off their load from Asia,” he said. “Most of the export is also from the West Coast. We have a lot of agricultural products that are produced in California.”
Soybeans, fruits, vegetables and other perishables are shipped to Asia from California, Tang said.
If ships drop things off on the East Coast and don’t pick up good to bring back, that creates another issue. Containers stuck at ports have also created a shortage of the containers for ships departing from Asia.
Tang said that some have suggested imposing penalties for letting containers sit too long at ports.
Even if the Florida diversion works to relieve the California ports – where Tang said containers have been sitting for months – a shortage of 80,000 truck drivers in the U.S. adds to pressures slowing down the supply chain.
“Right now, everyone is panicking and trying to rush,” Tang said. What stakeholders such as governments, distributors and warehouses need to do is work together in order to coordinate solutions, he said.
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