Trade with China helped build the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach into an economic powerhouse in recent decades. The flow of goods across the Pacific supports well-paying jobs on the docks and has turned the Inland Empire into an epicenter of warehousing.
But China's economic growth is slowing and concerns over the world's second-largest economy have unnerved investors, leading to wild stock market swings in recent weeks.
This has been excerpted from the 10 September 2015 edition of the Los Angeles Times and is available in its entirety at:
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-qa-bingham-20150910-story.html