As the Port of Cleveland gears up for the 2025 shipping season, officials are cautiously optimistic about maintaining or surpassing last year’s economic impact, which reached $7 billion. However, uncertainty surrounding new tariffs has cast a shadow over those expectations.
“The best word I can use right now would be uncertainty,” said Dave Gutheil, interim president and CEO of the Port of Cleveland. “The tariffs certainly throw a monkey wrench into that outlook because if the tariffs impact the cargo volumes, then our economic activity goes down a bit. We’re hopeful that’s not the case, but we have to take a ‘wait and see’ attitude right now.”
Gutheil recently traveled to Washington, D.C., to meet with industry groups and cargo clients, but said there’s still little clarity on how the tariffs will affect business. “They’re still not sure, which means we’re not sure what the impact is going to be,” he explained. “It’s difficult when you have uncertainty in the supply chain, and we’re kind of on the front rung of that.”
That uncertainty could have ripple effects throughout the port’s operations. “If you look at our cargo volumes, for example, the guys on the front lines down at the port—the longshoremen working the ships—they might not have certainty on a week-to-week basis about what’s coming in,” Gutheil said. “We hope the volume stays strong to make sure those guys and gals are working the ships. The more activity we have down there from a vessel call standpoint means more hours for them.”
Despite the concerns, Gutheil remains hopeful that cargo volumes will remain steady. “Our volumes, we believe and we hope, are going to be pretty much on par with what we did in 2024. The implementation of the tariffs that the administration is talking about hopefully doesn’t change that too much.”
One area where the port is expecting significant growth is the Great Lakes cruise industry.
“This is going to be a record year for us. We’ll have 55 cruise calls this year, a big jump from last year, which was in the low 20s,” Gutheil said. He credited the increase to the return of Victory Cruise Lines, along with continued service from Viking, the French luxury line Le Dumont, and other operators.
“We should see well in excess of 10,000 passengers move through the port this year,” he added, noting that the first cruise ship is scheduled to arrive in late April—earlier than ever before.
While the impact of tariffs on cargo shipments remains uncertain, the expected boom in cruise activity still offers a bright spot for the port’s outlook in 2025.