NEW ORLEANS — An aircraft carrier is docked where cruise ships used to welcome vacation-bound passengers.

Instead of forklifts and work crews, freight terminals sprout a tent city full of soldiers. The cranes that should be loading and unloading a wealth of cargo are still — there are no workers to operate them.

Almost two weeks after Hurricane Katrina shut it down, the Port of New Orleans — an economic nerve center in the global distribution of coffee and grain, rubber and steel — is determined to begin reopening.

Trying to pull that off next week, officials are trying to conjure up the people, power, and resources that have become this region’s scarcest resources.

Still, port officials say, it is imperative to reopen the port hard along the Mississippi River, however painstaking that becomes.

 When it does reopen, officials say, the port will do so at only about 10 percent of its normal capacity. The hope is to reach 25 percent after 3 months.

The pace of progress could have repercussions for consumers and businesses thousands of miles from the mouth of the Mississippi.

“Let’s say you’re in Cleveland and you go buy your Fruit of the Loom underwear at Wal-Mart,” said Gary LaGrange, the port’s executive director.  “When we aren’t bringing it into this port, the supply goes down, the demand rises and guess who pays?”

“That is why we need to get it up and running — and soon.”

In putting the Port of New Orleans out of commission, Hurricane Katrina didn’t just deliver another blow to the local economy.

The port is the gateway to a river system that allows cargo to move to and from 33 states, either on the Mississippi or its tributaries. Its reach is broadened farther with the port’s connection to six railroads.

Knocking out one of the world’s busiest shipping ports has set in motion almost certainly higher prices on goods working their way to stores and manufacturers warehouses nationwide.

“It’s inevitable,” said Yvonne Rhodes, vice president of Houston-based shipping consultant Ocean Trader International. “It’s not just oil and gas.” The port’s closure freezes or slows movement of a range of goods, Rhodes said.

That’s creating plenty of worries for companies that rely on the port.

“It’s of great concern to us because we are on the brink of harvest season,” said Dave Feider, a spokesman for Minneapolis-based Cargill Inc., which sends grain down the Mississippi by barge to New Orleans where it’s loaded on ships for export. “It’s a massive disruption. It’s also tough to get updates and information because we are having a difficult time getting through to people down there.”

For now, goods are being rerouted to ports in Texas, North Carolina, Florida and Virginia.

But it’s not as simple as telling the ship’s captain to bear 20 degrees starboard and head for another port. It must be the right port, for example, to handle perishables, or to make intermodal transport connections.

Exported goods needing to leave port soon require attention as well, Companies competing with foreign businesses can’t afford to have their goods, such as grain, sitting in containers.

James Campbell, president of the International Longshoremen’s Association, Local 3000, said he will have enough workers to restart some operations next week. Plans are under way to bring a ship into the port, where workers displaced from their homes can sleep and eat.

The U.S. Coast Guard and the Army Corps of Engineers still are surveying the Mississippi River for damage.

But looking out of his fourth-floor riverside office, LaGrange points to a grain barge heading north to indicate movement isn’t the problem.

Restarting operations at the port is about retaining its status as one of the world’s leading ports.

The Port of New Orleans is the nation’s top importer of coffee, the top importer of natural rubber and the top destination for steel, some of which comes from Japan, Brazil, Russia and Mexico.

“It’s vital that we open, get these people working and some activity in these terminals,” LaGrange said. “If for no other reason, other than psychologically, this could be the first step to New Orleans’ recovery.”