Tacoma’s big cranes raise weighty questions about the United States’ role in global trade

A picture may be worth a thousand words, but it also may be the inspiration for a million-word debate.

You don’t get many more impressive photos, or sights if you happened to witness the event firsthand, than the recent ones of a ship putting into Commencement Bay with its cargo of four 295-foot-tall container cranes to be installed at the Port of Tacoma’s Husky Terminal.

It’s an image sure to prompt a lot of wordy questions, such as: Why does the port need more cranes? How do they keep the ship from tipping over with such a high center of gravity? How do you get the cranes off the boat and onto land?

There are straightforward answers to those questions.

The cranes are needed to accommodate the larger container ships, referred to as super-post-Panamax, that are being introduced into service. Between bracing of the crane structures, securing them to the deck of the vessel and ballasting systems on the ship itself, the cranes can be safely carried across the Pacific, not the most placid of waters. And there’s a process laid out for transferring the cranes.

But there’s one more set of nagging questions that aren’t so readily answered, such as: Why are we even hauling cranes across an entire ocean? Why can’t we just buy or build them here?

The immediate answer seems basic enough. The port isn’t buying American-made cranes because, it says, no American firm makes them and hasn’t since the 1970s. In fact, none of the container cranes currently operating in either Tacoma or Seattle are American made.

The loss of that capability seems a head-scratcher. While container cranes are big and no doubt there’s some technological and engineering skill that goes into their design and construction, they don’t look to be any more complicated than things the U.S. does still build — like passenger jets. The U.S. still has companies that can handle giant infrastructure and metal-fabrication projects, including a handful in the Northwest. Building the components domestically, shipping them to a port and assembling them on site ought to be no more complicated a process than what’s done now.

But whatever the reason, the market has been ceded to eight manufacturers around the world, one of which is China-based Shanghai Zhenhua Heavy Industries Co. Ltd (ZPMC), the supplier of eight cranes to Tacoma (the other four are to be delivered in 2019). According to the port, ZPMC is “is the largest heavy-duty equipment manufacturer in the world and delivers more than 200 cranes every year around the world, including many seaports in the U.S.”

Thus we have a situation in which Chinese-built equipment is required to unload big metal boxes of goods, primarily Chinese-made, at an American port for shipment to American consumers.

That’s hardly a new situation, but the renewed attention to it, thanks to the arrival of the cranes, happens to roughly coincide with another significant recent event — the Trump administration’s announcement of tariffs on steel and aluminum imports.

The predominant reaction in this region has been one of condemnation for the action and not just because of the prevailing hostility to all things Trump. Metal production isn’t a big component of the regional economy — just two working aluminum smelters remain in Washington, and one of those is currently idled. The state also has just one steel mill, Nucor’s in Seattle. Thus the steel-and-aluminum battle isn’t seen as our fight. Moreover, there’s a fear that trading partners like China and Europe will take out their unhappiness on products we do have a stake in, like wheat.

But not everyone, even in this region, believes the official Northwest mantra that trade is good and a net economic benefit to American workers and consumers. The free-trade/fair-trade, open-trade/protectionism debates are older than the country is, but they’re showing revived strength in dividing Americans within political parties, industries, labor groups and geographic regions. One group of Americans wonders why their opportunities should be limited to protect the outmoded and inefficient jobs of another, holding up progress in the process. That group, in turn, wonders why they should sacrifice their livelihoods, not to mention the country’s well-being, so that the first group can buy cheap junk cheaply.

Into that robust exchange of opinions and insults, the latest round of tariff proposals introduces the element of national security. Does it matter that the United States no longer makes container cranes — or the steel used to make them? That debate topic alone is good for a million words or more (arguing is one skill Americans haven’t lost).

Expect the production of trade-related verbiage to hit record levels this year, because the administration looks to be ready to pick even more fights, including on some topics and involving industries this region has considerable interest in. If that’s the case, those giant cranes now being installed on the Tacoma waterfront won’t be asked to lift anything nearly as heavy as the rhetoric on international trade headed your way.

This story was originally published March 17, 2018 at 12:46 PM with the headline "Tacoma’s big cranes raise weighty questions about the United States’ role in global trade."