Impacts of the expansion of the Panama Canal for foreign trade of the United States

Abstract

This paper will discuss which routes have impacted United States trade through the Panama Canal, mainly determining an impact after the expansion of the canal, It was used data before and after the expansion to make a comparison, mainly data from the years 2015 and 2019, where it was identified that the route between Asia-United States obtained a positive variation of 2.03% in the thousands of tons transported, with respect to the route between South America-United States the variation was 1.10% and for the route between EuropeUnited States it was -1.66%. For the analysis and determination of the information mentioned above, the work begins with data on exports and imports from the United States to and from each of the mentioned routes, for that reason a commercial profile was also presented with information on countries in specific as Chile, China, South Korea, Japan and the European Union. Lastly, the changes in times and in the performance of the Panama Canal in the years before and after the expansion will be discussed, in addition, information on the logistical and infrastructure changes that this expansion has generated for the United States will be presented. Finally, it was determined that the expansion of the canal has caused the routes between the United States with Asia and with South America to present an increase in tons transited, however, the western route of the United States-Europe has decreased the transit of tons in recent years. In addition, it was determined that the expansion of the canal represented major logistical changes for the ports of the eastern United States.