<\/p>\n
Even after the Labor Department\u2019s surprisingly positive numbers Friday on employment in May, \u201cI\u2019m still not convinced that we\u2019re going to have a V-shaped recovery,\u201d Mario Cordero, the executive director of the Port of Long Beach, said in an interview.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Long Beach and the Port of Los Angeles are the main gateway for trade between the U.S. and China, which spent much of 2019 in a tariff war that disrupted transpacific shipments before the global outbreak of Covid-19. The pandemic first caused supply shocks that severely constricted trade between the world\u2019s two largest economies. Then came a slowdown in demand.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
While \u201cthere\u2019s evidence of recovery\u201d and it\u2019s promising that \u201cwe\u2019re going to have gradual numbers\u201d improving, \u201cI think we\u2019re definitely a year away from some sense of normalcy,\u201d Cordero said.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
California\u2019s San Pedro Bay port complex, which includes Long Beach and Los Angeles, saw 61 canceled sailings of container ships in the first quarter, compared with 31 in the same quarter a year earlier. So far this quarter, there have been 49 cancellations, nearly five times the number from April through June of 2019.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Cordero said the drop in shipping container volume through Long Beach is slowly getting less severe. In April, volume was down 17.3% from a year earlier, but last month\u2019s figures might not be as bad.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\u201cPreliminarily, it\u2019s been reported to me that we\u2019re going to have a better number than April,\u201d he said. \u201cIf it\u2019s going to be a negative number it\u2019s going to be very low, so I\u2019m hoping that the final number comes in as a positive number.\u201d<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Swings in trade tend to track the economy\u2019s overall performance. Commerce Department figures this week showed the sum of exports and imports as a share of GDP declined to 19.6% in April, the lowest since February 1993. Total trade\u2019s portion of GDP was as high as 32% in July 2008.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Bloomberg Economics is predicting a GDP plunge of 36.6% this quarter, down from a 5% contraction in the first quarter.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Cordero said his outlook for a gradual recovery hinges on trade relationships not worsening.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
President Donald Trump, during a visit to Maine later on Friday, took aim at the biggest U.S. markets across both oceans, threatening to impose tariffs on cars from the European Union and on unspecified Chinese products unless both reduce their duties on U.S. lobster.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\u2013With assistance from Jordan Fabian.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\u00a9 2019 Bloomberg L.P<\/em> <\/p>\n gCaptain<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Even after the Labor Department\u2019s surprisingly positive numbers Friday on employment in May, \u201cI\u2019m still not convinced that we\u2019re going to have a V-shaped recovery,\u201d Mario Cordero, the executive director of the Port of Long Beach, said in an interview. Long Beach and the Port of Los Angeles are the main gateway for trade between …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":11246,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[56],"tags":[4239,1558,953,1206,4531],"class_list":["post-11245","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-marine-world","tag-chief","tag-economy","tag-port","tag-sailing","tag-smooth"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.al-sindbad.net\/rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11245","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.al-sindbad.net\/rest\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.al-sindbad.net\/rest\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.al-sindbad.net\/rest\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.al-sindbad.net\/rest\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11245"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.al-sindbad.net\/rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11245\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.al-sindbad.net\/rest\/wp\/v2\/media\/11246"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.al-sindbad.net\/rest\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11245"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.al-sindbad.net\/rest\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11245"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.al-sindbad.net\/rest\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11245"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}