U.S. ports are gloomy window on global recession

By Daniel Trotta and Michael Connor

NEWARK/MIAMI (Reuters) - Don Hamm has a front-row seat on the U.S. economy as president of the Port Newark Container Terminal near New York City and he sees just how lousy it is doing.

His books report a 30 percent drop in business from a year ago. The window of his office looks out into a largely idle yard.

Where trucks normally pick up and drop off containers brimming with imports and exports, he now sees empty tarmac and an accumulation of skeletal, unused hauling chassis.

"I've been in the business 40 years and I have never seen anything like this," said Hamm, a senior vice president at Ports America. "To have the whole world in a downward spiral is not something I think anybody of this generation has seen."

The view from Newark is not unique.

The port serving the densely-populated Northeastern United States is but one of a string of U.S. ports on the Atlantic, Pacific and Gulf Coasts whose businesses have been thinned by this recession and a dramatic drop in consumer spending.

The drop in sea trade has cost U.S. jobs, forced businesses into failure, slowed big-ticket capital spending, hurt ground transporters and rattled lenders to the many ports that serve as local and regional economic engines.

When Americans pulled back on buying leather recliners, kitchen countertops, computers, microwaves and other non-necessities, ports heavily reliant on Asian exporters such as Los Angeles, Oakland and Seattle were hit especially hard.