Posted on February 11, 2025
Tariffs and geopolitical conversation about control of one of the world’s most important waterways won’t be devastating threats to Jacksonville’s port, officials say, as Asian trade becomes a smaller part of the port’s overall business.
At Thursday’s 2025 State of the Port summit, JAXPORT executives and labor leaders said that the tariffs the U.S. imposed this week on imports from China could be a challenge, but one they expect will be overcome by business diversity and investments in infrastructure at Florida’s largest port by container volume.
“At this particular time, we don’t have any idea what the tariffs may look like, but we’re well prepared with our diversification,” JAXPORT CEO Eric Green said.
An estimated 15 to 20% of JAXPORT’s cargo flows through the Panama Canal.
In the last three years, JAXPORT has added a shipping lane to Europe and another to the east coast of South America. Those services, alongside JAXPORT’s stalwart service to Puerto Rico, mean the local port is not as dependent on Southeast Asia as other East Coast ports like Savannah and Charleston.
Thursday’s summit came less than a week after President Donald Trump imposed 10% tariffs on imports from China. And this week, newly appointed U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio expressed Trump’s desire to reacquire control of the Panama Canal in a meeting with Panamanian President José Raúl Mulino.
The U.S. built the Panama Canal in the early 20th century and operated it until it turned over control to Panama in 1999. Today, the canal is a vital shipping lane for Southeast Asian cargo.
Warren Smith, president of the International Longshoremen’s Association Local 1408, whose members unload ships at JAXPORT, says Jacksonville can further inoculate itself from geopolitical whims by focusing on the Indian subcontinent. That process began in earnest last year when Ocean Network Express began a container service that calls on Jacksonville as well as ports in Pakistan and India, Saudi Arabia, Spain and Egypt.
Warren Smith, president of the ILA Local 1408, is seen here setting up a demonstration on Heckscher Drive on Tuesday, Oct. 1, 2024, the first day of the ILA’s first work stoppage since 1977. | Will Brown, Jacksonville Today
“Jacksonville, being so well diversified in our cargo type, would greatly be impacted but only for a short period of time,” Smith says. “While we are looking at Asia – and particularly China and Japan as our major trade partners – there is a huge initiative for Indian trade. Indian trade has taken over, and I’m really hoping that Jacksonville pivots and looks in that area because most goods and services are now going to be funneled through the Mediterranean as opposed to the Panama Canal.”
The last 11 miles of the St. Johns River was dredged to 47 feet — a project that finished in 2022 — in order to accommodate the increasingly large mega vessels that traverse the Panama Canal and seek to call on Jacksonville.
Green says local port operator SSA Atlantic is also expected to complete a $72 million renovation on its leased property at the Blount Island Marine Terminal that will allow Jacksonville to handle as many as 2.3 million 20-foot cargo containers annually, a sharp increase from JAXPORT’s current record of 1.4 million.
Green and other local port officials have long set their sights on being more competitive with the ports of Savannah (which processes 5.25 million containers) and Charleston (2.49 million containers).
