The article states:
"Of course, the speed of that announcement illustrates a critical point: that this investment always was a business decision, not the early stages of a covert attack on Baltimore."
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In reality, the collapse of the deal proves no such thing. It proves only that they resigned themselves to the fact that the deal was not going to pass.
Actually, what it may well prove to be is that the US portion of the deal was not all that lucrative. Giant corporations were able to keep prices at the ports low because they were able to make much more money at other ports and it ended up with an overall gain. What they lost on margin they were able to make up on volumn. Without the US ports as part of the deal, they can just as easily end up in Mexico or Canada and because of NAFTA can truck the stuff in just as cheap. Some poor US company will take the deal, but without the volumn to sustain it (i.e. income from both sides of the shipping) it's going to be hard to meet their contracts. Either they will go under before the contracts expire, or they will have to raise prices so much that the Mexico/Canada thing will be a much better deal for the shippers.