Shipping and logistics industry stakeholders in the U.S. are preparing for shutdown-related delays after congressional deadlock left the federal government without a funding package as of 1 October.
The shutdown comes amid an already chaotic week in global shipping as Golden Week in China, which runs from 1 - 8 October and closes Chinese factories and ports, slows down supply chains worldwide.
A number of U.S. agencies with oversight of the shipping sector have released transition reports addressing how they will function during a government shutdown, which shed some light on how the industry will likely fare.
Key services related to health and safety, like cargo inspections, will largely continue, while regulatory and adjudicatory functions will be put on hold.
According to the Department of Transportation’s (DOT) 30 September shutdown plans, the U.S. Maritime Administration (MARAD), which oversees a wide variety of programs related to American ports – including President Trump’s initiative to strengthen American shipbuilding – will furlough 192 of its 790 employees (24 percent), while maintaining “functions that … address imminent hazards to the safety of human life and protection of vessels of the U.S. Government.” It will fund these essential programs through carry-over balances, while they last.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) will continue to collect tariffs and inspect and process cargo at U.S. ports. In its shutdown transition plan, The Department of Homeland Security said that CBP currently has 67,792 working employees, roughly 63,243 of whom will remain working through the shutdown to perform essential functions.
The Federal Maritime Commission (FMC), which regulates and licenses ocean transportation agents, as well as resolves disputes among such agents, announced on 1 October that all Commission employees, with the exception of Presidentially-appointed, Senate-confirmed Commissioners Rebecca F. Dye, Daniel B. Maffei, and Max Vekich, are on furlough. While logistics stakeholders can still access the online system to file service contracts, they will not be processed until the shutdown ends.
Experts at FreightWaves and SupplyChainDigital said that they expected cargo inspections to run smoothly for the time being, but thought that bonded warehouses – which have seen a surge in orders since new U.S. tariff policy was announced – were likely to see requests that might exceed their capacity.
Amid the U.S.-based disruptions China’s Golden Week holidays have shut down ports and factories across the country.
Many shippers prepare for Golden Week by frontloading shipments in order to meet demand for Black Friday and Cyber Monday. This year, however, some of that frontloading was disrupted by Typhoon Ragasa, which closed major Chinese ports including Yantian, Nansha, Shekou, and Hong Kong, as well as significantly diminishing the capacity of air freight carriers and slowing Golden Week deliveries.
Additionally, UN Trade and Development released its annual Review of Maritime Transport for 2025, which echoed expert analysis that has been predicting a global shipping slowdown for months.
Key takeaways from the report were that global shipping routes are getting longer, largely in response to geopolitical unrest, which is increasing both financial and environmental costs for the sector.
With “distances growing faster than volumes,” as the report put it, the agency said that the sector is likely to face continued uncertainty in the year ahead.
“Freight rate volatility has become the new normal," the report said. "Container, bulk and tanker freight rates have remained elevated and volatile in 2024 and 2025, swinging sharply amid geopolitical tensions, trade policy shifts and supply–demand imbalances. This instability is driving up global trade costs.”
Though 80 percent of the world's cargo travels by ocean shipping, the sector lacks resilience to a number of a key challenges, the report said.
UNCTAD Secretary-General Rebeca Grynspan said a number of challenging transitions were required for the sector to stay resilient.
“The transitions ahead – to zero carbon, to digital systems, to new trade routes – must be just transitions,” Grynspan said. “They must empower, not exclude. They must build resilience, not deepen vulnerability.”
