California's ports are getting quieter and the state's huge export slump is getting worse.
Battered by the weak global economy, exports from California fell 25.5 percent in April from a year earlier, according to figures compiled Wednesday by Sacramento trade consultant Jock O'Connell. The shipments from California's ports, totaling $9.25 billion, represent the worst April in four years.
Earlier this year, exports were falling at about a 20 percent rate. O'Connell said the new figures show a turnaround is a ways off despite signs on the national level that the economy might bottom out soon.
Exports "are lagging economic indicators," said O'Connell, a trade adviser at the University of California Center Sacramento.
Cargo moving through the ports in April represented "transactions that were made months before that," he said, so even if the economy starts recovering soon, it could be months before exports pick up.
O'Connell said the export decline was widespread.
The volume of cargo leaving the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach was off 18 percent.
Exports from San Francisco International Airport fell 34 percent.
The Port of West Sacramento is one of the few ports doing better in the recession.
The port expects the tonnage of rice shipments, its main export, to roughly double this year, said port manager Mike Luken. The "year" runs from November to September, corresponding to the rice season.
Luken credited a federal trade agreement that increases the amount of rice purchased by Japan and South Korea.
Exact dollar figures weren't available, but Jim Morris of the California Rice Commission said the port's rice exports this year will probably come to $400 million. He didn't have comparable figures for last year.
For the state, April marked the sixth straight month of declining exports.
O'Connell added that imports at California's ports fell 28.5 percent, demonstrating the global spread of the recession.
Call The Bee's Dale Kasler, (916) 321-1066.
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