China to US shipping slump deepens as peak season fades early
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For decades, late summer through early fall has been the busiest time for freight shipments from China to the United States. This window traditionally fuels the supply chains of retailers preparing for the holiday season. In 2025, however, that rhythm has broken. Instead of building into September and October, container traffic peaked in July and has slowed sharply ever since. The early peak reflects the combined impact of tariff policies, aggressive inventory frontloading, and weaker demand in consumer-facing sectors.
The sudden collapse of peak season shipping
Industry trackers paint a stark picture. Data from Vizion shows imports from China falling for three consecutive weeks at a pace of 27 percent year over year. The National Retail Federation, with Hackett Associates, projects a decline of more than 5 percent in import cargo for the rest of 2025 compared with last year. Instead of the usual late September spike, booking pipelines are thin, with little indication of a rebound around Golden Week in China.
The situation recalls past slowdowns tied to labor disputes or soft demand. This year is different in both scale and cause. Analysis by Sea-Intelligence shows the trade war has created a boom-and-bust pattern in freight where early surges in container volumes are followed by sharp contractions. North America is the only global region to post outright declines in container traffic this year.
Product categories hit hardest in the trade war
The pain is uneven across sectors. Shipments of furniture, toys, sporting goods, plastics, machinery, and electrical components have dropped most steeply. Toys illustrate the trend clearly. Kyle Henderson, chief executive of Vizion, noted that volumes in toys and sporting equipment remain flat at roughly 20 percent below last year’s levels.
There are exceptions. Rubber and organic chemicals have shown activity that matches or slightly exceeds 2024 levels. Analysts connect that strength to earlier frontloading when temporary tariff extensions created a short-lived spike. These outliers, however, do little to offset the slump across categories that form the bulk of holiday demand.
Carriers respond with blank sailings and higher rates
The collapse in bookings has forced carriers to cut capacity. Drewry’s cancelled sailings tracker shows more than 12 percent of scheduled global sailings between weeks 38 and 42 were blanked, with nearly half of those on the transpacific eastbound route. The ONE Alliance, which includes COSCO, Evergreen, and CMA CGM, suspended a key service between Chinese ports and Long Beach and Oakland in early September.
With less capacity available, carriers introduced general rate increases. A $1,000 surcharge per forty-foot container took effect on Sept. 15, pushing spot rates above long-term contract levels. This move adds cost pressure on retailers that had already stocked up ahead of tariff deadlines.
Ports, retailers, and warehouses feel the pressure
The Port of Los Angeles illustrates the dramatic swing. July brought a record 1.02 million containers, reflecting the rush to beat tariff deadlines. By late summer, volumes fell sharply, and carriers scheduled 35 blank sailings for October.
Retailers are caught in a difficult position. Inventory data from the Logistics Managers’ Index in August showed higher capacity and weaker demand. Zachary Rogers of Colorado State University described the absence of freight ahead of peak season as a signal of both frontloaded inventories and thinner overall trade flows. Warehousing, trucking, and rail operators are seeing the downstream effects, with fewer goods to move or store.
The last quarter of 2025 offers little relief. Hackett Associates founder Ben Hackett has already warned that the trade outlook is not favorable. Retailers, represented by the NRF, stress that repeated tariff adjustments undermine their ability to make long-term sourcing plans.
The broader economic picture in China adds to the challenge. Industrial output and retail sales in August both came in below expectations, pointing to weaker external demand and internal caution. Combined with tariff-driven uncertainty, these conditions suggest the usual holiday shipping surge will not materialize. For logistics providers, the outcome is a slower peak, higher rates on thinner volumes, and a market shaped more by policy shifts than predictable cycles.
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