The Journal of Commerce has an interesting story on the outlook for West Coast ports. 2015 wasn't a great year: "If the recession year of 2009 is excluded, laden containers moving through West Coast ports in 2015 hit the lowest level in 10 years." But Washington ports did see growth:

The Seattle-Tacoma port complex was the only West Coast gateway in 2015 to experience year-over-year growth. Container traffic in Seattle-Tacoma in 2015 increased 3.7 percent over 2014, according to the PMA. Traffic declined 2.2 percent in Los Angeles-Long Beach and 4.7 percent in Oakland. The Port of Portland, Oregon, which lost most of its container business because of labor problems, experienced an 83.6 percent decline in container volume.

The 2016 outlook is more promising for West Coast ports.

Carriers and beneficial cargo owners this year say they believe labor peace has been restored to the West Coast, at least for now. . . .

At the same time, carriers are expressing confidence in West Coast ports by increasing the size of the ships they are deploying. . . .

Therefore, at least for the next year or two, West Coast ports believe they are poised to increase market share as more ships of 10,000 to 18,000 TEUs cascade from the Asia-Europe trades to the trans-Pacific, and capacity deployed to the East Coast increases marginally.

The result?

If West Coast ports efficiently handle the larger ships coming their way, and net capacity to the East Coast doesn’t increase significantly, West Coast ports should return to about 5 percent growth this year.

Meanwhile, one way to increase efficiency is to automate, as the Wall Street Journal reports.

Many in the industry believe automation, which boosts terminal productivity and reliability while cutting labor costs, is critical to the ability of ports to cope with the surging trade volumes and the huge megaships that are beginning to arrive in the U.S. Analysts estimate the [robotic cargo handling] technology can reduce the amount of time ships spend in port and improve productivity by as much as 30%.

Similarly, Opportunity Washington writes about how mandates to increase compensation may accelerate automation in other sectors.