Forty-three miles of waterfront, four-thousand two-hundred acres of land. 169 million tons of cargo a year, worth nearly $199 billion. Over sixteen thousand people, from longshoremen to harbour pilots, customs inspectors to truck drivers, the Coast Guard to prison guards. A virtual city within a city, through which 43% of all consumer goods enter the United States. The Port of Los Angeles.

America’s Port goes inside the busiest container port in America to get an unprecedented look at how this complex network of men and machines keeps the river of commerce flowing in the US, twenty-four hours a day. Twenty miles south of downtown Los Angeles, it functions as an independent, self-sustaining complex on the edge of the sprawling metropolis. Vital to the world’s modern, globalized economy, even a brief pause in the port’s operation would mean empty shelves and a crippling economic impact in retailers across the country. With its own police and fire departments, its own rail lines, its own restaurants and bars, even its own prison, it is a city that never sleeps.