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Alaska: Helping Drive Prosperity in Seattle

For most Americans, seeing a car with an Alaska license plate is rare. In Seattle, it is a common site that is a small, but telling sign of the Puget Sound region’s social and economic connections to America’s northern-most state.

With a need to import a wide range of goods and services, Alaskans are intimately aware of their links to what they call the “outside.” On the other hand, many people in the Puget Sound region recognize that our economy depends on international trade, but sometimes forget the many benefits we enjoy by trading with Alaska.

Ever since the 1890s when Seattle served as the transportation and provisioning gateway for prospectors headed to the Klondike Gold Rush, the Puget Sound region and Alaska have enjoyed a strong trade partnership. Today, shiploads of gold, and miners clamoring for picks and pack animals, have been replaced by a less colorful but more powerful flow of wealth.

In 2004, a study titled “Ties that Bind: The Enduring Economic Impact of Alaska on the Puget Sound Region”* showed that trade with Alaska adds more than $4 billion per year to the Puget Sound regional economy and creates more than 103,000 jobs in manufacturing, fishing, construction, transportation and a host of professional services including accounting, banking, engineering, medical and legal.

The volume of exports to Alaska is substantial. Alaska is the region’s fifth largest trading partner for goods produced here (not including aerospace). Locally produced exports range from building materials, such as cement and steel, to food products, chemicals and refined petroleum. The Puget Sound region also serves as a primary transshipment point for Alaska-bound products produced throughout the United States. Our ports and airport help connect the lower 48 states and Alaska, generating jobs for transportation and warehouse workers and others in our region.

For goods moving the other direction, the Puget Sound region is the hub for Alaska’s resource-based industries – including seafood, forest and petroleum products, along with manufactured goods such as world-class microbeers – routing products throughout the lower 48 states and to foreign markets including Asia and Europe.

Looking ahead, the Ties that Bind study predicts that trade between Alaska and the Puget Sound region will continue to increase as Alaska’s economy and population grow. Development of a proposed natural gas pipeline to tap Alaska’s North Slope reserves offers additional opportunities for trade.

Port of Seattle facilities play an important role in supporting trade with Alaska. Marine terminals in the Seattle harbor and on the Duwamish River load goods on vessels headed to numerous cities and villages throughout Alaska’s Southeast, Central, Aleutian, Western and Arctic regions. Fishermen’s Terminal and Terminal 91 are home to the North Pacific fishing fleet and enable Alaska’s bountiful seafood stocks to be brought to markets in a commercially viable manner.

Tourism is an emerging link with Alaska, most notably illustrated by the many cruise ships departing from the Port’s Bell Street Pier and Terminal 30 Cruise Facilities. Alaska-bound cruises are growing in popularity and offer passengers a chance to see the natural beauty of glaciers and wildlife, and to sample life in Alaska. Since 1999, the number of Alaska cruise vessel calls in Seattle has increased from six to 169 per year. Last year, 560,000 cruise passengers passed through Port of Seattle facilities, and the Port predicts up to 700,000 two-way passengers in 2005 (a 25% increase).

The cruise lines sailing to Alaska from Seattle generate more than 1,700 jobs and $208 million in business revenue in our region. The economic activities from cruises include everything from supplying goods and services to the vessels, to passengers staying and spending money locally before and after their cruise.

Beyond water-borne trade, the Port also connects Seattle and Alaska by air, serving an average 35 departures per day between Seattle-Tacoma International Airport and Alaskan cities. Air service between Seattle and Alaska provides a critical link for movement of passengers and cargo. The smiling Eskimo on the tail of Seattle-based Alaska Airlines planes is a familiar site at Sea-Tac; Alaska Airlines accounts for 29% of the airport’s flight operations.

The next time you are driving to the airport or by the waterfront on Seattle’s Alaskan Way and you see the blue, white and yellow “Gold Rush” license plate on the car in front of you, remember the strong relationship with Alaska that helps drive trade in the Puget Sound region.

For additional information on Puget Sound region and Alaska economic connections, visit the websites for the Alaska Committee of the Greater Seattle Chamber of Commerce and the Manufacturing Industrial Council of Seattle.

* Commissioned by the Greater Seattle Chamber of Commerce and the Tacoma-Pierce County Chamber, along with the Ports of Seattle and Tacoma and numerous Alaska dependent businesses.