USA Trade Online also allows you to track imports and exports traveling through more than 400 ports in the United States and its territories using the Port Selection screen. In the United States, ports include trade through airports, pipelines, roads, railroads, mail, as well as the more traditional sea-based ports. In the United States, physical ports are grouped into districts based on geography. The name of the district is the name of the primary port in that district. So the district of Baltimore, Maryland includes five ports: the cities of Annapolis, Baltimore, Cambridge, and Crisfield, and the Baltimore-Washington International Airport.

Two special ports -- low-value shipments and ships/vessels that leave/enter the United States under their own power, such as exported or imported cruise ships -- are also defined for statistical purposes. For exports, there is also a "Mail shipments" port. While districts can include ports in one or more states, except for the special ports, ports are always state-specific.

Ports are only available if you select one of the port-level items in the Data Selection screen. If you select one of these, you'll see the word "Port" show up instead of "District" in the Selection portion of the screen. The port-level items include five measures -- Total Value ($US), Vessel Value ($US), Vessel SWT (kg), Air Value ($US), and Air SWT (kg). Unlike non-port data, port-level data is measured in terms of shipping weights (in kilograms), not numbers of items. These shipping weights are only provided for air and vessel shipments -- shipping weights are not provided for trade by truck, pipeline, mail, etc. (Air and vessel account for about 60 percent of U.S. exports and 70 percent of U.S. imports.) Because shipping weights are used, they are available at all digit levels, not just 10-digit like non-port data.

Figure A: Port Selection Option

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Figure B: Port Selection Screen

Navigating the Port Selections

USA Trade Online includes port detail in all of the port-level reports. These allow you to see both port- and district-level data. The ports are grouped into the 40-plus districts. If you are familiar with districts, you may prefer to locate the ports you're interested in by finding the district, clicking the folder icon, and selecting the individual port(s) by clicking the checkbox.

You may instead prefer to search for the port by entering its name in the "Search for word or phrase" box and pressing the [Search] button. Note that the district and its main port have the same name even though they cover differ areas. To help you distinguish them, the district is identified with word "(District)" and the port is identified with the word "(Port)". You can also use any of the port selection options (e.g. “Selection method” and “Level”).

• Search Bar. Type in the whole or partial name of a port and press the "Search" button. The page should then reload and show the ports and districts that match your search. Check the box next to your desired customs district. If you wish to return to the expandable tree listing of all the districts, click the "Show All" button to the right of the search bar.
• Manual Selection. Open the folder(s) for each district that contains the port(s) you're interested in, and select the ports by using the checkbox.
• Other Selection Options. If you'd like to see information from all Ports, you should choose "Entire folder" as your selection method and then select the "Total All Ports" box and wait for the page to reload. This tells the system that you want to see information for all districts and ports in that folder. Alternately, if you want the total and all of the individual ports but not the districts, you could check both the 1st and 3rd "Levels," which represent the Total All Ports and Port sub-totals, respectively.

• USA Trade Online automatically saves any changes you make to your commodity, country, district or port (as applicable), and measures criteria before you view the resulting table. Only the "Advanced Selection" option in the time dimension requires you to save your changes first.
• Still can't find what you're looking for? Go to Frequently Asked Questions !