My understanding is Chinese ports have a much higher level of automation than ours. Whether or not that translates into overall higher efficiency I do not know.
They want a total ban on automation of gates, trucks, and cranes. [1]
Gates? Come on, do we really need to pay somebody $150k+ to open/close a gate?
The same article implies the west coast ports apparently also have more automation than the east coast ports. And depending on who you believe (the union or a CA professor), the automation didn't hurt man/hours at the ports.
