Business headwinds have blown against Georgia’s ports for months now with a new challenge — President-elect Donald Trump’s tariffs — lurking in 2025. But much like the hulking container ships that off-load cargo at the authority’s docks, the Georgia Ports Authority is barreling through the rough conditions.
Despite a trio of tropical storms, a four-day dockworker strike and a diverting of cargo to West Coast ports due to concerns about a new East Coast labor contract, the Georgia Ports Authority is off to the second-best fiscal year start in its history. While November data is not yet finalized, authority CEO Griff Lynch said year-over-year growth continued and the “next few months look solid” ahead of a labor contract deadline of Jan. 15 and Trump taking office Jan. 20.
The Georgia Ports’ current fiscal year runs from July 1, 2024, to June 30, 2025.
“We’re having growth despite all that’s gone on and could have an incredible next quarter,” Lynch said Monday during a Ports Authority board meeting. “I suspect when everything settles down with the labor agreement, things will go well.”
Credit: Stephen B. Morton for The Atlanta Journal Constitution
Credit: Stephen B. Morton for The Atlanta Journal Constitution
Uncertainty over negotiations between the United States Maritime Alliance , which is comprised of shipping companies and nongovernmental terminal operators, and dockworkers represented by the International Longshoremen’s Association are driving the late-year surge in business. The ILA went on strike Oct. 4 with the expiration of a six-year-long labor contract but ended the work stoppage four days later when the association reached a tentative agreement on a new deal. Stakeholders set a Jan. 15 deadline for the contract to be finalized.
However, negotiations stalled in mid-November, with the ILA citing the maritime alliance’s insistence on expanding the use of automated technologies in port terminals as part of the new contract. Dockworkers worry that automations, such as optical scanners at facility gates and remote-operated cranes in container yards, will eliminate jobs and accelerate a move toward fully automated facilities like ones operating in the Netherlands and China.
A U.S. Maritime Alliance representative said its push to introduce semi-automation is meant to increase safety and efficiency, not to cut employees.
With no indication as to when stakeholders will return to the bargaining table or if the new deal will be completed by the Jan. 15 deadline, manufacturers and shippers are moving excess cargo into the ports ahead of another potential work stoppage, just as they did before the October strike.
Trump’s tariff plan, which include a 10% surcharge on imports from China, is also increasing traffic in those goods, Lynch said. About 38% of Georgia’s port imports come from China.
Beyond the “front-loading” of imports ahead of Trump taking office, the effect of the tariffs remains uncertain. A trade war waged by Trump during his previous term didn’t slow the Georgia ports’ growth, with business surging by 41% between 2017 and 2020, from 3.9 million container equivalent units to 5.5 million.
Georgia Ports Authority Chairman Kent Fountain, who operates a cotton and peanut processing business, said tariffs are meant to encourage more domestic manufacturing of goods and that opening new facilities or expanding existing ones takes months and years.
“In the meantime, we have to have the products,” Fountain said. “We all realize that.”
Savannah Mayor Van Johnson addressed the tariffs in remarks last week. A Democrat who campaigned on behalf of election loser Vice President Kamala Harris, Johnson called tariffs a “dangerous economic policy” with significant potential effects on the U.S. economy and on port cities such as Savannah.
“We don’t need to create enemies through tariffs,” Johnson said.
Georgia’s ports would be even busier if shippers weren’t diverting cargo to West Coast ports not threatened by a labor strike. The dockworkers at the Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, which share a harbor, signed a long-term contract in 2023. The stability sparked a shift in traffic that resulted in record cargo traffic at those ports this summer.
Credit: Katelyn Myrick
Credit: Katelyn Myrick
Fountain noted Georgia’s current returns could be “a lot higher” if not for diverted cargo. Rail traffic out of the port’s Mason Mega Rail facility in Savannah is off 10%. Lynch called the shift an “overreaction” by shippers and noted the diversions have led to rail delays for cargo moving from the West Coast to Midwestern markets served by Georgia’s ports.
“I’d rather they have confidence in us,” Lynch said. “Our local ILA workers are doing a great job and have been as productive since the strike as they’ve ever been. But the reality is that until the labor contract is settled, the freight we lost won’t all be coming back.”
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