According to Paul Bingham, economics practice leader at Wilbur Smith Associates, while the goods movement infrastructure should not experience any capacity constraints in the short-term, modest but steady growth in trade will eventually result in capacity constraints if development projects do not move forward.

Global economy growth going forward will average about 3.8 percent a year, Bingham told the annual Western Cargo Conference of the Pacific Coast Council of forwarders and brokers. However, economic growth will not be uniform.

China’s economy is projected to grow by about 8 percent a year, with India averaging 7.8 percent annual growth and Brazil 4.9 percent. By contrast, North America will experience annual growth of about 3 percent, Europe, 2 percent and Japan about 1 percent.

In the U.S., government stimulus programs and inventory restocking by retailers this past year pulled the economy out of recession. “Recovery is behind us now, in terms of the fastest growth,” he said.

While the U.S. settles in to modest growth, the relatively strong 12.3 percent increase in imports in 2010 will retreat somewhat to 6.2 percent growth next year. Exports, which will increase 12 percent this year, will increase 7.6 percent in 2011, Bingham said.

The dollar will remain weak compared to other currencies, and developed countries will continue to pressure China to devalue its currency. China will do so, but not to the point where it hurts that country’s exports. “China’s currency won’t move to the free trade level any time soon,” Bingham said.

Nevertheless, strong economic growth in China and other developing countries in Asia, combined with the weak collar, will spur growth in exports. Although the vessel capacity issues that plagued the westbound trans-Pacific trade this past year probably won’t resurface in the coming year, carriers will continue to deploy their capacity based on import volumes from Asia.

That will give entrepreneurial carriers that choose to leave capacity in the trade this winter a chance to increase their market share of exports, Bingham said. If the trend of rapid growth in the developing countries of Asia continues for some time, the westbound trade will eventually become the head haul, and carriers will consider deploying capacity based on exports to Asia.

The structural shift in the trans-Pacific to an export-dominated trade will not occur for quite some time, however. “The gap is still big,” Bingham said.