## 4 Discussion
Notably, Santos ranks first when only operational resources are considered, excluding annual performance. This is primarily because five terminals were studied for this port. The distance from the Panama Canal is irrelevant for Santos, as its Foreland is more logistically connected to Europe. **Balboa:** The Panamanian Pacific port of Balboa consistently ranks in the top 3 in the LAC under both applied methodologies. Similar to Colon, its proximity to the Panama Canal, a crucial route for international maritime traffic, significantly influenced the weighting of its criteria. **Manzanillo, Panama:** Its ranking drops out of the top 5 when TOPSIS is combined with PCA. However, its annual TEU performance keeps it among the top contenders. The combination of its primary operational criteria and proximity to the Panama Canal make its container terminal notable. **Cartagena:** Colombia's primary container port has improved its ranking, now occupying the second position according to the applied methodologies. Undoubtedly, it is the Caribbean's best-utilized port in terms of operational criteria, as indicated by the various weighting combinations studied. **Callao and Guayaquil:** These two Pacific ports, close in both distance and annual performance, have improved their rankings, positioning in the top 5 when TOPSIS is combined with PCA. These container terminals, which have moved over two million TEUs annually for the past six years, have proportional dimensions. However, Guayaquil has a better combination of operational criteria. In the Caribbean, the best-ranked ports are San Juan and Kingston. However, San Juan ranks higher when considering its operational criteria compared to Kingston, which, despite sometimes having double the dimensions relative to the Jamaican port (as seen in Tables A1 and A2), does not double its TEU movements, thus being better dimensioned in its operational resources. The Brazilian ports of **Itajai** and **Paranagua** have very similar operational criteria dimensions and annual TEU performance. This similarity is reflected in their rankings, which have been close in all methodologies applied. However, the Port of Itajai ranks higher than the other port, despite having fewer resources in the considered criteria. This is attributed to greater efficiency in its utilization, as confirmed by Table A2. The Mexican ports of **Manzanillo** and **Lazaro Cardenas**, despite being in the top 10, require special attention given their low overall rankings in LAC. Despite having the United States as a primary trading partner and a Foreland connection to China, **Veracruz** has shown growth over the past ten years, but like all Caribbean ports, it has not consistently secured a stable top 10 position. Other ports, such as **San Antonio**, **Montevideo**, and **Buenos Aires**, which are the most important terminals in their respective countries (Chile, Uruguay, and Argentina), have consistently ranked in the lower half under the applied methodologies. **Santa Marta** and **Barranquilla**: Despite being analyzed as a cluster to improve input data, these ports always ranked list in all calculations and combinations. This is due to their inherent physical and logistical characteristics--Barranquilla lacks portainer cranes and faces access difficulties to its container terminal, while Santa Marta has minimal container handling capabilities and the lowest primary operational conditions, including berth length and cranes. In Figure 3, it is evident that certain factors, such as draft depth, appear to be irrelevant because all values are centralized and do not significantly impact the ranking of terminals, as they all have similar draft depths. The same holds true for the distance to the Panama Canal, multi-cranes, and reefers, where the majority of ports have values situated in the third quartile.