Baltimore’s port closure could upend jobs and supply chains for months

The collapse of the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore is going to impact more than just traffic. Baltimore’s port supports more than 150,000 jobs — 15,000 of them through direct employment. It contributes millions of dollars to the economy each day.

Tinglong Dai, a business professor at Johns Hopkins University, explains the port’s importance in pop culture terms: “The Port of Baltimore is like the Taylor Swift of U.S. auto ports.”

Much like Swift, Dai said that when the port’s not working, economies feel it.

Now, it’ll be closed indefinitely as officials work to clean up the wreckage of the Francis Scott Key Bridge. That means that goods like cars, farming and construction equipment, sugar and gypsum will all need to be rerouted.

Other ports have the ability to take in those goods, noted Chris Burroughs at the Transportation Intermediaries Association.

“Places like Norfolk or Charleston or Savannah, Jacksonville, you know, have extra capacity and are willing to kind of step up and take some of this freight,” he said. “Will this have impacts the supply chain? Sure.”

As for the 15,000 workers the port employs? For now, they’re stuck in limbo. The Maryland General Assembly is working on emergency legislation to keep families afloat while the port is recovering.

Delegate Luke Clippinger is sponsoring the legislation. “The goal here would be to support the port employees who could see their jobs go away while the port is closed, until they reopen the channel and get shipping backing back and moving again,” he said.

In the meantime, engineering analysts say it could take as long as a decade for Baltimore to rebuild its bridge.