Supply chain experts are cautiously optimistic as they track changes in cargo and import levels since the 90-day pause on U.S.-Chinese import tariffs began on 12 May.
As a result of the pause, preliminary information from various cargo and import indexes appears to suggest that an import spike may be coming in the near future.
SONAR, a freight data and market analytics platform owned by shipping industry trade publication FreightWaves, reported that while its Ocean 20-Foot Equivalent Unit (TEU) was still showing a week-over-week drop in vessels departing China as of 15 May, its Ocean Booking Volume Index rose in the same period, a disparity which likely reflects the lag time between booking and vessel departure.
Vizion, another freight analytics platform, was reporting what analyst Ben Tracy called in a LinkedIn post, “all-time-high daily numbers” in 2025 of bookings for vessels departing China.
“The previous 2025 daily high was on 6 January, when 34,721 TEU were booked for China [to] U.S. trade, second to that was 24 March, when 31,326 TEU were booked,” Tracy said. Bookings made on 12 to 14 May, he said, beat all previous 2025 records, with 39,693 bookings made on 12 May, 43,157 made on 13 May, and 42,296 made on 14 May.
In another post, Tracy said that he had noticed that the rolling seven-day average of TEU bookings had improved dramatically by the second day of the tariff pause, with only 5,709 TEUs booked as of 5 May and 21,530 TEUs booked by 15 May.
According to FreightWaves, shipping company Hapag-Lloyd also reported a jump in China to U.S. bookings during a 15 May earnings call. CEO Rolf Habben Jansen said that a surge in recent days left him confident about how the tariff pause would improve business.
“We expect capacity to return fairly swiftly,” he said, explaining that the company had been using smaller ships during the downturn rather than canceling sailings.
"we will reverse that soon. Within the next couple of weeks, we will deploy bigger ships again, and others may also increase capacity as the quarter progresses," he said.
One expert, however, said that any temporary spike would not make up for the overall drops in import volume that had already occurred this year. Port of Los Angeles Executive Director Gene Seroka told the Wall Street Journal on 12 May that he did not expect the port to see a surge in imports and that he expected to see the port end the month of May with a 25 percent drop year over year in import volume.
Elsewhere, the Suez Canal Authority released news that it would grant container ships with weights over 130,000 tons a 15 percent rebate upon transit of the canal in either direction “in light of the current positive developments in the security situation in the Red Sea and Bab Al-Mandab Strait,” the authority said.
The development came after Suez Canal Authority Chief Osama Rabie met with shipping companies to discuss the inducements that would bring them back to the canal. According to Reuters, revenue from the canal saw a huge year-over-year decline in the fourth quarter of 2024, earning only USD 880.9 million (EUR 790.3 million), as opposed to USD 2.4 billion (EUR 2.2 billion) in 2023.
In a 14 May LinkedIn post, maritime analyst Pablo Rodas-Martini said he doubted the rebate offering would succeed in drawing large vessels through Red Sea transit.
“The reputational damage would be enormous,” he said regarding any large shipping company that chose to place a 15 percent discount above the safety of its crew and vessel.
Other maritime supply chain analysts shared Rodas-Martini’s skepticism of the plan.
Journal of Commerce Europe Editor Greg Knowler said that it “doesn’t make sense to reroute carrier networks” until crew, ship, and cargo safety can be guaranteed, while Hany Mahdy, sales and marketing executive at Egypt-based Overseas Marine Services & Logistics (OMSL), said that the scale of the rebate did not address the scale of the risks.
