WASHINGTON, March 27 (Reuters) - The catastrophic bridge

collapse that closed the Port of Baltimore to ship traffic is

unlikely to trigger a major new U.S. supply chain crisis or

spike goods prices, due to ample and growing spare capacity at

competing East Coast ports, economists and logistics experts

say.

With six people still missing 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 on

Tuesday 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 seen as a major beneficiary, due

to its close 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.

The situation is a marked shift from the clogged,

understaffed ports and supply chain chaos of 2021 and 2022 that

spiked prices and fueled inflation as Americans binged on

imported goods purchases coming out of the COVID-19 pandemic.

East Coast ports have invested billions of dollars over the

past decade to expand capacity and while the temporary closure

at Baltimore may add time and cost for some companies,

economists do not expect a significant macroeconomic impact.

"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," he said, "we're dead in the water" with a

collective $2 million a day in lost wages at stake.

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," he said of the Baltimore

disruption, adding that it's "one more reason to think to start

shifting volumes to the West Coast instead of the East."