Global Container Shipping Disruptions, Pop-Up Ports, and U.S. Agricultural Exports
2023
Steinbach, Sandro | Zhuang, Xiting
This paper evaluates the impact of the Commodity Container Assistance Program on containerized agricultural exports from U.S. ports. The program, implemented by the United States Department of Agriculture in March 2022, was designed to address logistical disruptions related to the exporting of agricultural goods from the ports of Oakland, Seattle, and Tacoma. To assess the program's trade implications, we employed a goodlevel empirical model of bilateral trade that allowed us to estimate the counterfactual treatment e ects. The dynamic treatment estimates provide limited evidence of positive trade e ects after the program implementation. Speci cally, we found an average post-event trade e ect of 1.0% from March to September 2022, which was statistically insigni cant. These results are consistent across a range of robustness checks. However, we observe considerable treatment heterogeneity, with positive trade e ects for raw and prepared meat products. Between March and September 2022, the program incurred costs of $2.8 million, while we estimate that monthly containerized agricultural exports from participating ports were about $18.6 million above the counterfactual during that period. These ndings suggest that the program had limited success in facilitating U.S. containerized agricultural exports.
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