Port of Virginia touts confidence in ability to adapt to uncertainty

Despite the hectic, constantly shifting trade policies that dominated 2025 amid President Trump’s trade war, Port of Virginia Interim CEO and Executive Director Sarah McCoy said Thursday that the port remained adaptable and last year delivered the second-highest revenue year in its history.

Speaking at the 2026 State of the Port event in Virginia Beach, McCoy highlighted challenges the industry has faced and ways the port navigated a year of uncertainty. In February 2025, Trump imposed a 10% tariff on Chinese exports, kicking off a series of escalating trade measures between the U.S. and China.

“Before we keep talking and looking ahead, we’ve got to talk about last year,” she said. “2025 was wild. But it gave us a clear picture of what this era of global trade looks like.”

The port has previously stated that Chinese goods account for only about 19% of its cargo. McCoy noted Thursday that the port’s trade lanes are diversifying, with a strategic mix of partners: 24% of imports and exports come from northern Europe, 22% from Southeast Asia, 21% from Northeast Asia and 14% from India. She said this diversity reduces the volatility of any single market.

“Supply chains are being reconfigured in real time to prioritize speed, resilience and flexibility,” she said. “This is no longer a period of temporary discretion. This is the operating environment in Virginia. We have proven that we can operate. In this environment, last year, we increased productivity, even as conditions around us continue to change.”

She told reporters the war in Iran has had a very minimal impact on the port’s container shipping, but noted it had a “very significant impact on fuel and that supply chain.”

Despite these challenges, last year, the port earned $877 million in operating revenues, which McCoy said was the second-highest in the port’s history, behind 2022’s $946 million.

A central component of McCoy’s speech was the numerous projects the port is working on to invest in its future. McCoy noted the port in February completed a $450 million project to dredge Virginia’s commercial shipping channels and Norfolk Harbor. The project, in development since 2019, aimed to produce channels deep and wide enough to safely handle two-way traffic for the largest ships in the Atlantic trade. The widening portion was completed in February 2024.

“We have built the most accessible harbor in the Atlantic trade, at 55 feet,” McCoy said. “It is the deepest on the East Coast. And with room for two-way vessel movement and zero overhead restrictions, we have cut port stays up to 15%.”

The channel wasn’t just built for the ships in circulation today, McCoy said, but also for the next generation of vessels. She said being prepared for the future provides certainty that ships will not outgrow Virginia’s harbor.

The dredging was one of the central projects in the port’s $1.4 billion capital construction campaign known as the Gateway Investment Program. The campaign launched in 2023 and, since then, has resulted in fully operational projects, such as an $83 million expansion of the port’s annual rail capacity to 2 million 20-foot equivalent units (TEUs) and a $220 million conversion of the Portsmouth Marine Terminal into a deep-water heavy-lift facility.

Last month, the port brought a fourth ultra-large container vessel berth into operation, which McCoy noted was twice as many as the two in operation at the same time last year. A fifth ultra-large container vessel berth is being developed at Norfolk International Terminals’ North Berth and is scheduled to be in operation in 2027.

“In 2025, trucks moved through our gates in an average of 36 minutes, and containers moved from ship to rail in just 34 hours,” she said. “Those metrics, they don’t happen by chance. They are the result of coordinated investment in infrastructure technology and people working together to move harder, quickly and predictably onto its next destination.”

Weathering future instability

In February, the Supreme Court ruled Trump couldn’t use the International Emergency Economic Powers Act to enact tariffs freely. However, Trump then issued a 10% global tariff under the 1974 Trade Act.

McCoy told reporters that the port doesn’t know what the future holds regarding trade policy, even if there seems to be an emerging “new normal” with tariffs. Nevertheless, she said, last year taught the trade industry, “We can get through it.” She said even if the future of trading is uncertain, the port is confident it can overcome whatever challenges may lie ahead.

Ultimately, McCoy said, she hopes to “run the most efficient port in America” and be a “business magnet.”

“We want businesses to locate close for the speed and reliability in the supply chain,” she said. “When the world’s so uncertain around us, we want to be that certainty that people say, ‘Let’s locate in Virginia. Let’s be close to the Port of Virginia.”

McCoy has been serving as interim CEO since the start of this year, after former CEO and executive director Stephen Edwards left at the end of 2025 to become CEO of ferrying company Hornblower Group.

When asked by a reporter about the port’s long-term solution to find Edwards’ replacement, McCoy replied, “Our board is running a global search, and my job is really simple: Keep the momentum of this incredible port and give them the time and space they need to run that search, and so that’s what I’m focused on right now.”

The Port of Virginia is one of the state’s economic drivers, accounting for more than 565,000 jobs, more than $124.1 billion in total spending and $5.8 billion in state and local tax revenues.