Statistics

VI Foreign trade
There are 261 approved Foreign-Trade Zones in the United States. Repeating an exercise we first conducted last year, Site Selection and Conway Analytics have extracted relevant jobs, manufacturing and merchandise received/exported data from the latest U.S. FTZ Board report to Congress (published in August 2021), indexed the numbers and ranked the Top 20 U.S. Foreign-Trade Zones by Economic Impact and Top 10 States by Total FTZ Economic Impact.

In the individual zone category, the Port of South Louisiana’s FTZ 124 in Gramercy ranks No. 1, followed by San Jose’s FTZ 18 in California at No. 2 and then FTZ 78 in Nashville at No. 3, administered by the metro government of Nashville and Davidson County. Zones in Houston, Los Angeles and Indianapolis follow.

With four of the top 20 FTZs, it’s no surprise that Texas leads our list of Top 10 States, followed by California, Louisiana, South Carolina and Tennessee. Indiana and Florida jump into the Top 10 this year, while Kentucky and Georgia drop out and Illinois drops from No. 5 to No. 10. Notably, both Indiana and South Carolina claim two FTZs in the Top 20, and Puerto Rico not only claims the No. 7 FTZ in Mayagüez, but the No. 7 spot among all U.S. states and territories for overall zone impact.

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  Among the findings in the report of the FTZ Board to Congress:
  
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  There were 195 FTZs active during the year, with a total of 347 active production operations. 
  
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  Over 470,000 persons were employed at some 3,400 firms to work in FTZs during the year.
  
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  The value of shipments into zones totaled nearly $625 billion, compared with over $767 billion the previous year.
  

About 59% of the shipments received at zones involved domestic status merchandise. “The levels of domestic status merchandise used by FTZ operations — 74% for production operations and 42% for warehouse/distribution operations — indicates that FTZ activity tends to involve domestic operations that include significant domestic inputs alongside foreign inputs,” said the report.
Warehouse/distribution operations received over $283 billion in merchandise while production operations received $341 billion (55% of zone activity). The largest industries accounting for zone production activity include the pharmaceutical, oil refining, automotive, electronics, and machinery/equipment sectors.
Exports from facilities operating under FTZ procedures amounted to over $94 billion. The export figures do not include certain indirect exports involving FTZ merchandise that undergoes further processing in the United States at non-FTZ sites prior to export.
The FTZ Board’s decisions included the reorganization or expansion of five zones under the alternative site framework, which allows for specific new company investment locations to be more or less subsumed into the FTZ, as well as decisions on 67 applications and notifications for new or expanded production authority. FTZ Board Staff processed an additional 232 requests that primarily included minor boundary modifications.