Trump tariffs could bring a decade of growth at the Port of Philadelphia to a screeching halt

In March, the container ship Marco Polo sailed up the Delaware River to deliver a cargo of clementines from Morocco to the Packer Avenue Marine Terminal.

This marked the first time a ship that large, 1,300 feet long — well over twice the height of City Hall — had docked at an East Coast port. It was also a welcome sign that the Port of Philadelphia, after years of investment in infrastructure and aggressive marketing, is truly coming into its own as a destination for global commerce.

However, this good news has come under the shadow of President Donald Trump’s anti-trade policies, which are likely to discourage more ships like the Marco Polo from coming to Philadelphia, costing jobs and rippling through the regional economy. Convinced — against the warnings of the vast majority of America’s economists and business leaders — that shutting our doors through high tariffs is the key to prosperity, he is putting into place policies that will do real harm to the Delaware Valley.

The port now accounts for 20% of U.S. food imports.

Philadelphia has worked hard over decades to maximize the potential of its port, carving out a profitable niche as America’s leading entry point for fresh fruit from around the world.

A range of big investments have made this happen. The Delaware has been dredged so large ships like the Marco Polo can come upriver. New cranes have been installed to unload refrigerated containers.

And enormous new cold storage facilities have been built, with more to come, so that the incoming fruit can be warehoused and then distributed across the country through the dense rail and road network that is one of the region’s great assets. The city’s port now accounts for 20% of U.S. food imports.

And Philadelphia’s leaders, both private and public, have made a consistent effort to sell the port to global customers. I remember how, in 1992, when I served at the U.S. Embassy in Chile, then-Mayor Ed Rendell led a delegation of elected officials and businesspeople on a tour of the port when Chilean grapes had just begun to enter the American market through Philadelphia. It was a real-time example of how valuable this trade was becoming.

And the port has been able to make the necessary improvements to manage this burgeoning trade in large measure because of successful lobbying for federal money.

All of this has meant jobs, not only for the longshoremen who move the containers from the ships, but for the employees of the firms, many family-owned, that import the fruit, repack it, and then distribute it to supermarkets and other customers.

This “cold chain” moves fruit from countries as varied as Chile, Peru, Costa Rica, and South Africa. The Port of Philadelphia has even begun to receive imports from Vietnam, as improvements in the Panama Canal make it more competitive with West Coast ports.

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The port’s business has steadily increased over the last decade. But this upward trend could come to a screeching halt. Trump has imposed a 10% tariff on all imports, including fresh fruit.

And he is even contemplating imposing a million-dollar fee every time a Chinese-built vessel docks at an American port, whether or not it is carrying Chinese cargo.

The impact of his decisions is yet to be felt, but fresh fruit is, as the economists say, “price sensitive,” and it will not require enormous increases for shoppers to decide the grapes, cherries, plums, nectarines, kiwis, etc., they have become accustomed to buying year-round might suddenly be too expensive.

The result: fewer ships coming here, and fewer jobs for Philadelphians.

Cooperation among business and political leaders built the success of the Port of Philadelphia, but a full-court press will be required to get the Trump administration to turn away from the harm it is doing to our area’s workers and businesses.

Richard M. Sanders, a Philadelphia-area native, is a former American diplomat who spent much of his career dealing with trade and investment issues in Latin America.