The Port of Corpus Christi loses $50 billion of oil exports a year — 1 billion barrels annually — because the greatest country in the world cannot dredge the port. Texas passed a law forbidding more than one large container ship per week from entering the nearby Port of Houston in 2019, because Houston, too, cannot dredge its port. Ships now line up for weeks off the coast of California to load and unload cargo because America cannot make other ports deep, wide, or modern enough to handle standard cargo ships.
This situation drastically increases the cost of American exports and, with it, the U.S. balance of trade deficit. An estimated 1.6 million jobs have been lost in America because of this problem. Competitors in the Middle East and China have benefited.
A couple of years ago, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio (D) unveiled a plan to protect lower Manhattan from rising sea levels that, if left unchecked, will eventually require at least 90,000 New Yorkers to be relocated. But the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers said that the project cannot be done without overhauling federal dredging laws. Unlike the dredging fleets in countries like Belgium and the Netherlands — the world leaders in tackling these problems — the U.S. dredging fleet is old, small, and largely obsolete. America does not have nor can it build this capacity in any foreseeable future.
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