Thanks to globalization, and to containerized shipping that began in 1956 and makes globalization work, commodities swiftly move vast distances around the planet. Wal-Mart alone imports 400,000 containers a year. Trade flows can, however, be deflected or even defeated by a distance of just five feet. Herewith a story of the high costs of a few feet and of too many years required for our nation’s increasingly sluggish public processes to move.
Charleston, S.C.’s port, the East Coast’s fourth busiest (1.38 million shipping containers a year), is 45 feet deep. But in two years the Panama Canal will open a larger set of locks capable of handling ships 50 percent wider and with deeper drafts than today’s “Panamax” ships — the largest that can currently transit the canal.
The first container ship reached Charleston in 1966, carrying 600 containers. Today the port receives ships carrying more than 9,000. By 2014 there will be 1,200 “post-Panamax” ships — marvels of naval architecture, floating mountains — built for commerce after the canal widening. They will carry up to 18,000 containers. The widening, says Jim Newsome, CEO of the South Carolina State Ports Authority, will be “the biggest game-changer in the history of containerization.”
Charleston could be out of the game, with huge anti-competitive consequences for the burgeoning manufacturing and exporting industries of the Southeast — BMW, Michelin, General Electric (turbines) and others in South Carolina alone. By 2014, two-thirds of the world’s container capacity will be carried by ships bigger than the unwidened canal could handle. Some things are moving rapidly.