Falling Dollar = More Exports

This chart shows the value of the dollar in relation to the Euro against outbound TEU's (Twenty-foot Equivalent Unit containers) from the port of Los Angeles / Long Beach.

The Euro has been gaining strength while the dollar has been falling over the past year. When the Euro was first introduced in 2001, it was trading at roughly equal to that of the dollar, you could get a Euro for 94 cents. As of February 2008, it takes $1.48 to buy a Euro, a 57% increase in the price in just seven years.

Not all is doom and gloom; as the dollar declines American exports begin to look like bargains to consumers overseas. Likewise, the amount of American exports from Los Angeles / Long Beach has increased over this time period.

The joke used to be that the greatest American export was outbound empty containers. There was some truth to this argument.

It was easier and cheaper to create new containers in China and ship them to the United States rather than wait for empty containers to make their way back to the mainland.

This is no longer the case, the balance between outbound traffic and inbound traffic is starting to stabilize, due to decreases in inbound traffic and increases in outbound traffic.