Tariffs shrink trade deficit; Wilmington port hit hard as container volume drops
WILMINGTON, NC (WWAY-TV) – The Trump administration said their rollout of global tariffs has narrowed the trade deficit. While the deficit is the smallest its been since 2020, the tariffs have hit home in the Cape Fear.
“It’s been a challenging year across the board,” said Brian Clark, executive director of North Carolina State Ports Authority.
During the 2025 fiscal year, which ended in June, the Port of Wilmington saw 6,600 fewer containers than the prior year.
“We’ve seen a downturn in container volumes largely driven by some of the impacts regarding tariffs,” Clark said.
Despite smaller container volume in 2025, Clark said the financial outcome was positive.
“Five months into FY26 we continue that trend, volumes are down but financial results have been strong,” said Clark.
As the port faces uncertainty with tariffs, it could benefit from the Wilmington Harbour 403 project which would deepen the Cape Fear River and bring in larger ships.
“From a competitive standpoint it’s a very important project right now every other port on the east coast is deeper by at least five feet,” Clark said.
The project would deepen the river from 42 to 47 feet. Clark believes the dredging would support the economy and make Wilmington competitive with neighboring southeastern cities.
“Our goal is not to replicate Savannah and Charleston and what these other ports are doing, they are doing great things on their own, they handle a lot of volume at the end of the day,” Clark said. “Our focus is to deliver on our mission for the state which is to support the economy to open up access to global gateways.”
Many worry the dredging project would increase flooding, ghost forests, the spread of PFAS and damage water nesting bird habitats.
“We want to be a good neighbor we don’t want to do anything that has a negative impact on the river and on the communities on the river and that’s why the 403 process that the corps is undertaking right now is so important,” Clark said.
The Army Corps of Engineers Wilmington District received over 1,500 public comments regarding the project and will use them to inform their final environmental impact study which will not be submitted until the fall of 2026.
Until then, the port remains like ground zero for the fight between economics and ecology, but Clark hopes there can be balance in a job that can feel like a rollercoaster.
“We’ve seen just over the last five years is there’s been a lot of disruption from COVID-19 to peaks to tariffs and everything that’s happened, a drop in consumer demand but we’ve some great balance, if one sector was down usually another sector was up,” Clark said.
Clark said another project the port is working toward is the port’s new intermodal rail yard which will add four new working tracks to the port.
Once completed it will increase intermodal capacity by 50,000 containers a year.
