FEATURE-U.S. ports are gloomy window on global recession

(This story is part of a special Reuters package about the strain on U.S. state, city and local finances during the recession. To see the package, double-click on: here)

By Daniel Trotta and Michael Connor

NEWARK/MIAMI, July 13 (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.

At California's Los Angeles-Long Beach, the monthly count of twenty-foot equivalent units (TEUs) passing through the massive ports complex dropped 25 percent between November 2007 and May of this year, according to the Port Tracker newsletter published by IHS Global Insight.

TEUs, a measure of container activity, over the same time dropped 37 percent at Seattle and 31 percent at both Houston in Texas and South Carolina's Charleston.

Federal officials last week reported that U.S. exports rose 1.6 percent to $82 billion in May after dropping 3 percent in April. Imports nudged lower to $119.4 billion after falling in April. In May 2008, U.S. goods exports totaled $109.5 billion and imports $183.2 billion.

"They are all suffering," said Paul Bingham, managing director at IHS in Washington. "Workers are seeing fewer jobs, fewer hours. Some port authorities have laid off workers or given retirement incentives and offered furloughs."

PORT TROUBLES FELT INLAND

Port managers are putting off buying new cranes and other equipment, suspending or canceling other capital investments, and stretching out repairs and maintenance. Other businesses are also stung by the downturn at the ports.