The value of exports from America's foreign-trade zones (FTZs) increased by 24.8 percent in 2014, to a record $99.2bn in merchandise exported, according to figures released by the U.S. Foreign-Trade Zones Board in its recent Annual Report to Congress. The 2014 export figure also represents a threefold growth of FTZ exports in the five years since 2009.

Following the Panama Canal expansion in 2016, up to 10 percent of container traffic to the U.S. from East Asia could shift from West Coast ports to East Coast ports by 2020, according to research conducted by the Boston Consulting Group and C.H. Robinson. Rerouting that volume is equivalent to building a port roughly double the size of the ports in Savannah and Charleston.