Press release: “The United States ranks second in world maritime container traffic with one in nine maritime containers in the world either bound for or coming from the United States, according to “America’s Container Ports: Delivering the Goods,” a new report from the Bureau of Transportation Statistics (BTS). BTS, a part of the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Research and Innovative Technology Administration, reported that U.S.-container trade in 2005 and 2006 was more than double the trade of a decade earlier. An estimated 46.3 million 20-foot equivalent units (TEU’s – the standard measure for counting containers of various sizes) passed through U.S. ports in 2006, up from 22.6 million in 1996. Two-thirds of the containers are imported into the United States.”