Port Ownership 
Monday February 20, 2006 by Hal
This is a bit off my normal topics - but since I’ve worked with port terminals, I thought I’d add my $0.02 worth. This is the text of an email to a friend who asked the question.
I am somewhat surprised at the reaction of everyone to this issue and, at the same time, not really surprised.
A little background: the largest port in North America is the combined Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach - which is really just one huge area. This area, while owned by the cities, is leased out to terminal operators to build and operate the massive infrastructure needed. This includes massive civil works, entire railroad systems and multi-million dollar crane systems.
Most if not ALL of the individual terminals are joint ventures by companies from several nations - WBCT (West Basin Container Terminal) in Long Beach is a joint venture of China Shipping, Hanjin, and others - all Asian. P&O Ports [the company being bought] operates numerous east and west coast terminals and they are an Australian company.
The combinations of these companies are more for economies of scale than for something sinister, I think. Every large port terminal operator is an amalgam of purchases and acquisitions over decades.
That having been said, I still maintain that all the searching that goes on at airports doesn’t hold a candle to the amount of searching it would take to cover every container that enters the US from overseas.
Part of the confusion, I think, is this at once a practical/business issue and a political issue, and the two aspects don't overlap much. Politically, this is 180 degrees off from the steady anti-Arab propaganda of the past 5 years. If Joe Sixpack is paying attention, and has been buying the propaganda so far, he's not gonna like this one bit.
Yes, sometimes I Am Joe Sixpack. (Usually paying attention, though making few if any propaganda purchases.) — Mike Tuesday February 21, 2006 #