'We Currently Have No Container Ships,' Seattle Port Says

Looks like this needs updating now https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/chinese-cargo-seattle-tari...

> In fact, the Northwest Seaport Alliance … said it was so far seeing more vessels call into port in 2025 than in 2024, with three more calls in the first quarter of 2025 than during the same period in 2024.

> However, the ships calling into port were arriving with unpredictable volumes of cargo — sometimes 30% less than anticipated

And Snopes felt comfortable rating “mostly false” to the top level claim? I get that they’re trying to navigating treacherous waters, but “there’s still ships, they’re just 1/3 empty” is as much support for the top level claim as it is contradiction

Not really, the claim was „the port is empty“, not „the ships arriving are empty“. If there are still ships arriving, the claim is false.

Most of what comprises a port is infrastructure for handling containers and bulk cargo. If cargo volumes are down, some fraction of that infrastructure is disused, or used below its capacity. That a ship was at berth is cold comfort to the longshoremen, truck drivers, etc. who expected to work that cargo, nevermind to the people that expected to, y’know, purchase and consume those goods.

Is 30% underutilized / partially disused tantamount to empty? Maybe not. But it’s in the ballpark in a way the snopes rating undersells.

> But it’s in the ballpark

It is not remotely in the ballpark. The word “empty” is not understood to mean “70% full” anywhere in the English-speaking world.

One sets off for a morning drive on Thanksgiving. Upon entering the freeway, they find the normally traffic-congested road smooth and free-flowing. The journey takes a little more than half the time it usually would. They exclaim "Wow, the roads are empty this morning!"

I'm playing a bit of devils advocate, but it's not inconsistent to observe a typically congested resource X operating at a fraction of its capacity, and note the observation with "wow, X is _empty_".