Gold, symbol Au on the periodic table, as well as computers for the artificial intelligence industry and GLP-1 weight loss drugs helped put two airports at the top of the US port rankings for the first time.
Getty Images
Two US airports, Chicago’s O’Hare International and New York’s JFK International, ranked first and second among all the country’s airports, seaports and border points in 2025, something that certainly hadn’t happened in decades and most likely never.
- Credit AI with an avalanche of computer hardware imports related to building data centers for the nascent AI industry.
- Credit “GLP-1 drugs” like Wegovy, Mounjaro and Ozempic to fuel a huge appetite for Americans interested in losing weight.
- Credit gold – Au on the periodic table – saw its fastest price rise in four decades last year and gold trade has been linked to unfairness for the US and the global economy in the era of President Trump’s tariff war with the world.
Port Laredo in Texas was the nation’s No. 1 port the previous two years – and for the fifth year in a row its trade set a record in 2025. That wasn’t enough to keep Port Laredo No. 1. It finished third despite growing trade with Mexico, which accounts for 97% of its exports and imports.
For decades, before Port Laredo topped the rankings, that honor belonged to the Port of Los Angeles. That was until Trump’s first trade war against China changed the pattern of global trade. In 2025, the Port of Los Angeles finished fourth, certainly its lowest ranking in many decades.
Whether the two airports — or even one airport — has ever been ranked first among the nation’s 450-plus U.S. airports, seaports and border crossings cannot be determined with the U.S. Census Bureau data used for that ranking, because it only goes back to 2006 for the nation’s ports.
O’Hare drug-assisted GLP-1, computers
That doesn’t take anything away from what happened at O’Hare, which saw its business grow 31.52% in 2025 to $388.22 billion. Over 75% of this total was imports, which increased by 36.61%.
Just under 20% of those total entries were the No. 1 entry, a class that includes glucagon-like peptide-1 receptor agonists, which they mimic the natural GLP-1 hormone in the body which stimulate the release of insulin. The overall increase in the US was 224.28% over the previous year, with 96.16% of the category’s imports from Ireland and even 97% flying into O’Hare.
O’Hare also benefited from introductions related to artificial intelligence—and he wasn’t alone.
The broad computing category ranked third at O’Hare, accounting for 17.40% of imports in 2025. The 87.58% increase brought the total to $51.46 billion.
Five airports recorded large increases
The increase helped O’Hare maintain its top spot in computer imports, despite the fact that five of the top 10 “ports” recorded increases of more than 100%:
No. 2 Ysleta-Zaragoza Bridge outside El Paso, up 199.04%
No. 3 San Francisco International Airport, up 169.51%
Number 4 Port Laredo129.61% increase
Number 5 Los Angeles International Airport154.87% increase
No. 8 Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport, up 223.82%
The JFK story is about gold exports, imports
JFK International Airport, meanwhile, finished second behind O’Hare almost exclusively in gold exports and imports.
US gold exports jumped from the 14th most valuable outbound shipment in 2024 to the fifth most valuable shipment in 2025 with an increase of 171.52%. The total was $80.58 billion. Of this total, 82.22% left JFK, destined mainly for Switzerland, where gold is processed and stored, and the United Kingdom.
It was JFK’s most valuable import, worth nearly five times that of the second most valuable import, civilian aircraft and parts.
On the import side, the first two categories were essentially gold: a category that includes other precious metals but was more than 99% gold and the traditional gold category.
The former is described in the Census data as rectangular in shape while the latter is largely crude.
The total at JFK for these two in 2025 was $84.66 billion, with the former increasing 281.57% and accounting for 89.91% of imports and the latter at $16.64 billion and an increase of 209.21%, accounting for 55.12% of all US imports.
Together, the rise of O’Hare’s and JFK to the top of the US trade rankings tells a story about the country’s pivot in 2025. Two airports, not a port or a border crossing, at least for now are at the forefront of US commerce. They reflect the growing importance of high-value, fast-moving goods—from semiconductors and servers that power artificial intelligence models to pharmaceuticals and gold that embody both innovation and caution in turbulent times.
