In issue 724 of the Sea-Intelligence Sunday Spotlight, using the latest vessel deployment data, we show that the capacity surge on the Asia-North America West Coast (NAWC) trade lane has fizzled out, bringing supply back to where it was before the tariff-pause.
Following the announcement of the pause in the China-US trade war, there was a surge in container volumes from US importers, moving cargo that had been stuck in China when the 145% tariffs were in force, but it was also expected that importers would front-load cargo from the Q3 peak season, ahead of the tariff-pause ending. In response, shipping lines planned significant capacity injections to meet the increased demand. However, continued regulatory uncertainty caused US importers to pull back from their initial optimism.
The latest data from Sea-Intelligence’s Trade Capacity Outlook (TCO) database now shows a clear reversal in the capacity deployment planned by the shipping lines. Figure 1 illustrates how shipping lines’ capacity plans evolved since early May on Asia-North America West Coast. (....)