Low cost, speed, flexibility, and reliability, as the central tenets of the inter-modal logistics system, have shaped socio-spatial patterns of North America's global port cities in specific ways, creating functionally specialized and geographically separated spaces of flows. This chapter argues that 9/11 provided a policy platform in order to further the objectives of the trade community, by spatially severing once and for all the physical channels of the international trade of goods from the workings of the postindustrial port city. Meanwhile, the trade community has been able to use potential trade-offs between security and efficiency as an excuse to legitimize public spending on supply chain securitization. Meanwhile, the trade community has been able to use potential trade-offs between security and efficiency as an excuse to legitimize public spending on supply chain securitization. The politicization of port security rendered visible a trade-off between security and efficiency.