Nearly an hour before President Donald Trump dropped Wednesday’s bombshell that his global “reciprocal” tariffs would be put on hold for 90 days while China’s duties would spike to 125 percent, future projections for cargo entering the U.S. were revealed to be falling off a cliff.
Imports during the final six months of 2025 are now expected to be down at least 20 percent year over year, Hackett Associates founder Ben Hackett said.
Forecasts for inbound cargo volume at major U.S. ports came in at 2.14 million 20-foot equivalent units (TEUs), up 11.1 percent year over year—largely in line with last month’s projections as importers rushed product into the country ahead of President Trump’s country-specific tariff announcement on April 2.
Related Stories
But the outlook from the National Retail Federation (NRF) and Hackett Associates paints a more troubling picture in the months after, with April’s container projections slowing to 2.08 million TEUs, up 3.1 percent year over year. This number marks a deceleration from the Global Port Tracker’s forecasts last month, which called for a 5.7 percent increase to 2.13 million TEUs.
“We basically have the industry at a standstill with importers waiting to see if anything will change before making major decisions,” said Robert Khachatryan, CEO of freight forwarder Freight Right Global Logistics ahead of Trump’s newest tariff announcement.
The April numbers come as more importers deal with the uncertainty of the tariff situation, especially for goods coming out of China.
“Most of our customers have cancelled bookings,” Khachatryan told Sourcing Journal on Tuesday. “There was some expediting happening with shipments from China in the past few weeks. However, our customers who import from Southeast Asia were very much taken by surprise by the high level of tariffs imposed. There was no time to react or move bookings around.”
And although the high tariffs out of countries like Cambodia, Vietnam and Thailand have been rolled back temporarily to make room for negotiations, the 10-percent baseline tariffs remain in place. This keeps importers in an uneasy position when it comes to planning for months out in the event the current status quo changes.
“[Tariffs] are creating anxiety and uncertainty for American businesses and families alike with the speed at which they are being implemented and stacked upon each other,” said Jonathan Gold, vice president for supply chain and customs policy at NRF, in a statement. “At this point, retailers are expected to pull back and rely on built-up inventories, at least long enough to see what will happen next.”
Import and export bookings to kick off the month have reflected this hitting of the “pause” button, according to data from supply chain visibility provider Vizion. Between April 1-8, global container bookings dropped 49 percent and U.S. imports fell 64 percent from the seven-day period immediately before. Bookings from China fell 36 percent in the same period.
“In this environment of complete uncertainty, our forecast for import cargo will be subject to significant adjustments over the coming months,” Hackett said.
May is the first month where the adjustments are seeing massive swings. The month is expected to end 19 consecutive months of year-over-year growth, dropping sharply to 1.66 million TEU, down 20.5 percent from the same time last year.
When prior expectations were laid out in March, imports were expected to increase 2.8 percent to reach 2.14 million TEUs.
June is anticipated to see inbound cargo plummet even further at 26.6 percent to 1.57 million TEU, the lowest volume since February 2023. The previous month’s estimates called for just a 3.2 percent drop to 2.07 million TEUs.
The current forecast would bring the first half of 2025 to 11.73 million TEUs, down 2.9 percent year over year. This runs counter to the previous January-to-June prediction of a 5.7 percent increase to 12.78 million TEUs.
The second half continues the downward trend. Imports during the final six months of 2025 are now expected to be down at least 20 percent year over year, Hackett Associates founder Ben Hackett said. Port of Long Beach CEO Mario Cordero parroted the same statistic in an interview with Bloomberg Wednesday morning.
The bleak outlook for container demand marks a bullwhip effect from months of front-loading done ahead of both the East and Gulf Coast port strike to start October and Trump’s return to office in January.
According to the Global Port Tracker, U.S. ports had the busiest February in three years even through the month is traditionally the slowest of the year because of Lunar New Year factory shutdowns in China.
Major ports handled 2.06 million TEUs that month, up 5.2 percent, although the Ports of New York and New Jersey have yet to report final data.
