News
For the four-week period of weeks 16-19, Sea-Intelligence has looked at capacity scheduled at different points over the past six weeks to gauge the impact of tariffs.
The current political climate is extremely volatile and given that tariffs are being imposed and suspended on an almost daily basis, Sea-Intelligence assumes that both shipping lines and cargo owners are only adjusting their short-term supply chains for now and waiting for things to settle down (one way or another), before making longer-term network adjustments.
On the Asia-North America west coast, 1.43 million TEUs were scheduled for deployment for weeks 16-19 in Week 10. They remained consistent in Week 11 and only slightly decreased to 1.4 million TEUs by week 12. In Week 13, however, scheduled capacity for weeks 16-19 dropped 8% week on week to 1.29 million TEUs, further dropping to 1.37 million TEUs by week 15. Overall, it is 12% lower than what was scheduled six weeks ago.
On the Asia-North America east coast trade, scheduled capacity for weeks 16-19 declined from 1.01 million TEUs scheduled by week 10 to 867,000 TEUs scheduled in Week 15, which represents a 14% decline across the six-week period.
On the combined Asia-North America trade, only 60,000 TEUs were scheduled to be blanked for weeks 16-19 three weeks ago. They increased to 250,000 TEUs in the space of a week, as carriers announced a raft of blank sailings in response to the tariffs. Another significant increase came in Week 15, with the total blanked capacity for weeks 16-19 increasing to 367,800 TEUs.
No similar impact is seen on the trans-Atlantic trade, where capacity is largely holding steady, especially now considering a 90-day suspension of tariffs has been announced by both the U.S. and the EU.
