Port of Los Angeles and Long Beach

The adjacent ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, on San Pedro Bay south of downtown Los Angeles, together form the busiest container port complex in the Western Hemisphere. Through their forest of cranes and stacked containers flows a huge share of the goods the United States imports from Asia, making this stretch of Southern California coastline the single most important gateway in the country's trade with the Pacific Rim.

The two ports are separately run but operate side by side, handling many millions of container units a year along with cars, oil, and cruise ships. Their scale makes them an economic engine and a chronic chokepoint: backups here ripple through supply chains nationwide, as the pandemic-era logjam of ships waiting offshore made dramatically clear. Efforts to electrify and automate the terminals have become a focus of both trade policy and air-quality fights in the LA basin.