If the trade deficit is a topic that arises in your OM class, a visual image of the Port of New York and New Jersey is worth 1,000 words. Fortune (Nov.15,2010,pp.14-15) discusses the “Container City” one passes in driving on the NJ Turnpike. 
In the first 8 months of 2010, 70,000 more full cargo containers entered the Port than left it. In other terms, 45% of the containers exported from the Port are empty, a reflection of the US trade imbalance. Yet a 3rd statistic: 1.80 to 1 is the ratio of imports to exports, up from 1.75 to 1 last year.
Six of the world’s largest ports are now in China, up from two just a decade ago. The largest port in the US in the Port of Los Angeles, the world’s 
16th biggest, down from 8th ranked a decade ago.
What all of this means, of course, is that we are running a huge trade deficit, of which the logistics imbalance is one surrogate measure. Who benefits? My cousin Bob is the only one I know. He ships scrap metal to China for recycling and pays only a fraction of the shipping charges he would if he were sending from China to the US.