Logistics

Asia (China) - USA Trade
Supply Chain Sustainability and Future Transportation Strategies
By
Antonio Bedo lla

UNIVERSITY OF BRITISH COLUMBIA
LOGISTICS AND SERVICE MANAGEMENT (COMM-349)
April 11, 2008

CONTENTS

I
II
III
IV
V
VI
VI I

ABSTRACT .......................................................................... 3
INTRODUCTION................................................................ 4
ASIAN IMPORTS AT A FIRST GLANCE ........................ 5
GATEWAYS & CORRIDORS LA/LB SITUATION ........ 6
SUSTAINABILITY OF ASIA NA TRADE ....................... 8
VANCOUVER, LOS ANGELES AND L. CARDENAS .. 10
CONCLUSION .................................................................. 13
APPENDIX........................................................................ 14
SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY ........................................ 16

2

ABSTRACT
This paper compares three different ports located on the pacific coast in which
future growth would result in a tremendous impact on Chinese exports and at the same
time could reformulate the transportation business solutions helping many firms to
optimize their supply chain in a market that seems to beexperiencing incredible and
unstoppable expansion. Annually millions of containerized products travel from Asia into
America and most of them will finish in the USA market; therefore, capacity and
environmental impacts such as traffic congestion, insufficient roads and cargo facilities,
tend to be large in magnitude compared to the past years, so even small changes in the
supply chain designcan have a large impact on the net benefits. More time efficiency,
cost savings and some other possible advantages could be found when taking in
consideration that the Los Angeles port congestion has been starting to increase and so
tends to overvalue other strategies that increase management strategies such as using
neighboring countries as middle points in the general distribution process.3

INTRODUCTION
The rapid growth in Asia-North American trade continues to be driven by imports
of manufactured goods from low-cost production countries like China (see Figure 1);
therefore, in order to be successful and lead in the marketplace many firms keep on
developing and improving their global supply chains by using the most cost-effective
transportation infrastructure available.Since USA is China’s most important export
market and accounts for roughly one-quarter of all Chinese exports, the following
research paper will be focusing on these important trade partnership countries.
Before delving deeper into the subject, it will be very important to mention that
the statements covered by the following paper are based on the fact that during the last
three years, theChinese economy has grown at an average annual rate of 10%, growth
that has placed it fourth in the world after USA, Japan and Germany. However, the
Chinese growth is based in its increasing exports and the investment in fixed assets, such
as property, factories or machineries (capital assets); facts that encourage the fears in the
inefficiency of the Chinese industrial platform, because theChinese companies produce
more every day, but with a greater amount of capital assets, incurring along the way an
increased risk of inflation and overproduction, scenarios that could create disagreement
and controversy with some of the ideas that will be developed along these pages.

4

ASIAN IMPORTS AT A FIRST GLANCE
“According to statistical information the top 5 overall U.S. containerizedcargo
trading partners in 2005 were all Asian countries: China (mainland), Japan, Hong Kong
(categorized as a special administrative region of mainland China), Taiwan, and South
Korea (see Figure 2)”1; these facts entitled a general idea of how important are the trade
relations between Asia – North America, the primary transportation method used to take
the Asian manufactured goods is by...