The Port of New Orleans is Coming Back ... Slowly

摘要

Seventy percent of the port's pre-Katrina ship traffic has returned, which is phenomenal. But there are questions about the rest. In the wake of Katrine, many observers worried that the blows suffered by the Gulf port infrastructure might prove lethal. Although the hurricane's ultimate impact on trade remained to be seen, early indications were pessimistic. A comprehensive economic study that Congress commissioned from the Congressional Budget predicted that GDP growth in the U.S. in 2005 would slow by half a percentage point. The good news was that transportation networks appeared resilient ("... redundancies in the transportation system will enable most shipments to reach their destinations, albeit at somewhat higher costs and times in transit"). The bad news was that the Port of New Orleans (and to a lesser extent other Louisiana ports) had sustained severe damage.