WASHINGTON, March 27 (Reuters) - The catastrophic bridge

collapse that closed the Port of Baltimore to ship traffic on

Tuesday is causing some logistics headaches, but is unlikely to

trigger a major new U.S. supply chain crisis as competing East

Coast ports are poised to handle more cargo, economists and

logistics experts say.

With six people presumed dead after a container ship

collision destroyed the Francis Scott Key Bridge, it remained

unclear how long the span's twisted superstructure would block

the harbor's mouth.

But port officials from New York to Georgia were busy

fielding queries from shippers about diverting Baltimore-bound

cargo from containers to vehicles and bulk material.

"We're ready to help. We have ample capacity to absorb any

surge in container traffic," Port of Virginia spokesperson Joe

Harris told Reuters.

The Norfolk-based port is expected to be a major beneficiary

due to its proximity to Baltimore, but ports in Savannah and

Brunswick, Georgia, also were poised to absorb some traffic, a

spokesperson for the Georgia Ports Authority said.

U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg told MSNBC on

Wednesday that while there were many ports on the East Coast,

"there is no substitute for the Port of Baltimore being up and

running," as it is the top U.S. port for vehicle imports and

exports, including farm and construction machinery.

Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said a federal supply chain

task force was meeting on Wednesday to assess the port's closure

but said the Biden administration "will do everything as quickly

as we possibly can" to reopen it.

Supply chain experts say U.S. port infrastructure is more

resilient than during 2021 and 2022, when they were understaffed

and clogged with ships and containers, spiking prices and

contributing to inflation as Americans binged on goods purchases

during the COVID-19 pandemic.

"The collapse of the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Maryland is

another reminder of the U.S. vulnerability to supply-chain

shocks, but this event will have greater economic implications

for the Baltimore economy than nationally," Ryan Sweet, chief

U.S. economist at Oxford Economics, wrote in a note.

"We don't anticipate that the disruptions to trade or

transportation will be visible in U.S. GDP, and the implications

for inflation are minimal," he added.

NO SHIPS, NO WORK

The impact on the Port of Baltimore's more than 2,000

workers who load and unload cargo vessels could be significant

if the closure lasts more than a few days.

The dockworkers are day laborers, said Scott Cowan, head of

the International Longshoreman's Association Local 333 in

Baltimore, meaning they only work when there is cargo to be

moved. He estimated there might be about a week's work clearing

the existing inventory at the port.

After that, the workers could lose a collective $2 million a

day in lost wages, he said.

The port directly generates over 15,000 jobs, with an

additional 140,000 jobs dependent on port activity, according to

Maryland Governor Wes Moore's office.

VEHICLE PORT

One area of concern is higher shipment costs for imported

cars and trucks and for exports of farm tractors and

construction equipment as Baltimore is the largest U.S. port for

"roll-on, roll-off" vehicle shipments, with over 750,000 cars

and light trucks handled by state-owned terminals in 2023,

according to Maryland Port Administration data.

Ford Motor Co ( F ) and General Motors ( GM ) said they

would reroute some affected shipments but the impact would be

minimal, while Volkswagen is unaffected because its

new Sparrows Point vehicles terminal is located at a former

steel mill site on the bridge's Chesapeake Bay side.

The risk of car price spikes is further dampened by a

recovery in automotive inventories to their highest level since

May 2020, after being drawn down sharply during the pandemic.

The industry's inventory-to-sales ratio is near its

32-year-average of 1.96 to 1 according to Census Bureau data,

and sales incentives have risen in recent months as high

interest rates dampen demand.

COASTAL SHIFT

Ryan Peterson, founder and CEO of logistics platform

Flexport, said that with Baltimore handling only 1.1 million

twenty-foot equivalent containers last year - ranking 12th in

the U.S., any impact on container rates and shipping costs from

the disruption would be far less than increases caused by

cargoes diverted from the Suez Canal because of attacks on Red

Sea shipping by the Houthi militant group in Yemen.

But the port outage could contribute to a shift of container

traffic to West Coast U.S. ports that was already underway over

the past several months because of the lack Asian shippers'

access to the Suez route and reduced capacity in the Panama

Canal due to low water levels. Peterson said the potential for

an East Coast longshoreman strike in late September - at the

height of Christmas-season imports - also has some shippers

considering West Coast shipments.

"East Coast volumes are down and there is the ability for

those ports to flex up to handle this," Peterson said.