The spring and summer of 2025 has been an unprecedented time of uncertainty for shippers as Trump administration tariff policies toss sand into the gears of traditional supply chain planning and shipping activities for millions of businesses that import and export worldwide. No market has felt the disruption more acutely than U.S. businesses, whether it’s a manufacturer, retailer, port operator, or ocean container line.
The on-again off-again tariff situation “has absolutely had an impact on the cycle from ordering to producing to transport,” says Jess Dankert, vice president of supply chain for the Retail Industry Leaders Association, which represents thousands of retailers. “[There’s] lots of volatility in the market, [with retailers] hitting the brakes and pausing things until we see some certainty with tariff and trade policies,” she notes.
First there was the so-called shipping “air pocket” that began in April with the initial announcement of reciprocal tariffs between the U.S. and virtually every trade partner. That slammed the brakes on orders, particularly from suppliers in China. The result was a roughly 30% drop in vessel departures from China to the U.S.
Then shortly thereafter, the temporary 90-day pause went into effect initially through July 9. That opened the spigot, as businesses reset orders and rushed to get goods onto ships and in-transit to the U.S. before the pause ended. Ship lines, which during the “air pocket” had generally responded to the drop in demand by replacing larger ships in the Asia-U.S. trade with smaller vessels, had to quickly recalibrate and reposition assets once again.
Now the market is adjusting again. The Trump administration has begun notifying individual countries, over a dozen so far, of specific tariff levels the administration plans to impose. With that, the pause in tariffs taking effect has once again been extended, this time to Aug. 1.
PRIORITIZING KEY MERCHANDISE
The impact of tariff policies and their unpredictability has made trade flows anything but consistent, Dankert notes. For shippers, that’s changed how, when, what, how much, and how often they order.
Whereas in a more normal environment, demand planning and ordering might encompass a wide range of goods and occur over months, “now they have much shorter timelines, replanning every two weeks or less on a shorter cycle. That has injected more cost and uncertainty into the system,” she’s observed. “Decisions are made and remade quicker,” which impacts the ability to effectively optimize supply chain flows and control shipping as well as inventory costs.
Shippers also are carefully examining what they are ordering, Dankert adds, winnowing down what might have been a broad list and instead “prioritizing key merchandise and getting that produced and on the shelf for key seasonal landmarks,” she says.
“You have to look at what you can control and deliver, getting to market those priority goods, the high consumer demand items … not looking at the full range of goods you might be fulfilling in a normal market,” she concludes.
MANAGING UNCERTAINTY
While global shippers and containership operators certainly are familiar with boom-and-bust cycles, the sheer uncertainty and scope of disruption from the current environment is a beast unto itself. “The market went [almost overnight] from working in a predictable mindset to realizing they had no idea from one day to the next [what tariff policy would be and] how to manage their networks,” says Lars Jensen, CEO of consultancy Vespucci Maritime. “What seemed like a slam dunk of a peak season from China no longer was a viable scenario.”
He believes that today’s market unpredictability “now is at such a level that everyone is in some type of disarray on what to do. It’s impossible to make medium- or long-term decisions about your supply chain.”
The best approach today for shippers, Jensen advises, is “import what you actually know you can sell. Don’t front-load everything.”
DUSTING OFF COVID’S LESSONS
The shock to the global trade system from the current tariff negotiations, and the impact on shipping volumes and resources, has been not unlike what was experienced during the Covid pandemic, although not as severe, sources interviewed for this story have observed. The bright side is that many of the hard lessons learned during Covid are helping industry players better manage disruption and uncertainty this time around.
“Because of surges we had dealt with in the past, with Covid as well as other events, we had developed a pretty good playbook of mitigations we could put in place,” says Mike Bozza, deputy port director at the Port Authority of New York & New Jersey. “We dusted that off in addition to implementing other measures to help us manage the ups and downs and maintain fluidity and efficiency.”
About 25% of the port’s volumes come from China. In May, due to the initial tariff-driven downturn in cargoes, the port forecast it would see nine blank sailings (cancelled ship calls) through July. “That wasn’t a huge number, about 3% of anticipated calls [during that period],” he says.
Subsequently, as the tariff pause went into effect, the port implemented its action plan to get ahead of the expected surge in cargo prior to the July 9 deadline. “We worked proactively with terminal operators to move out as much cargo as possible. We identified additional nearby acreage for empty container storage if needed. A call to action went out to vessel operators to evacuate empties promptly. And they heeded that call,” Bozza says. “We are in a very good position for volumes to tick up.”
A COMING SURGE
At the Port of Long Beach, even though its numbers were down in May—and another decline was anticipated in June—“we are looking at an expected surge in July and August,” said Mario Cordero, the port’s chief executive officer, in early July. At that time, there were 68 ships headed to the San Pedro Bay complex. Some 40% of all containerized cargo imported into the United States from Asia enters through the San Pedro Bay ports complex—Long Beach and Los Angeles combined.
Last year, the combined ports moved more than 20 million containers “without any congestion or bottlenecks,” Cordero said. “That’s an indication of the lessons we learned from Covid and the collaboration we have had in the San Pedro Bay complex to avoid any repeat of what we saw in 2021,” he noted.
Cordero says the top concerns he hears from shippers are about costs, primarily related to tariffs. “Particularly the small to mid-sized shipper,” he adds. “They have a lot of anxiety over what the tariff number is going to be going forward.”
Shippers have been exceedingly cautious, with good reason. The coming surge in cargoes to the West Coast is actually “cargo that stayed in China during the period when shippers were exposed [to the 145% tariff].” Once the pause was implemented, “it was a race to get those containers on ships and into the U.S.,” Cordero noted.
All of these developments point to one overriding reality: Typical peak season shipping patterns are being upended. “What I continue to hear is [shippers] want clarity, long-range planning capability, and much lower tariffs,” commented Gene Seroka, executive director of the Port of Los Angeles in a recent press briefing.
Consumers, business, and labor are the three “key lenses” through which Seroka evaluates the health of the U.S. economy. Typically, the port sees activity up to three months before products hit the dock in Los Angeles. “It’s very slow here seasonally. We’ve already blown past the summer fashion [shipping season] and now back-to-school and Halloween before the all-important year-end holidays,” he notes. “The cargo for those micro seasons needs to be on the ground, right now.”
Seroka does not necessarily see that reflected in inventory levels and expects that consumers will experience higher prices and fewer selections for both back-to-school and Halloween shopping. “On the business side, many [shippers] continue to tell me that they’ve paused on hiring, capital investments, and overall supply chain initiatives,” Seroka says.
From where he sits, Seroka believes “the best-case scenario would be finding a way for the world’s two largest economies to work together.” He adds that today “products out of China still cost one and a half times more than they did earlier this year.” That makes products of all types more expensive “and creates a decision platform that’s not necessarily going to be in our best interests as consumers.” He expects the overall market to see lower inventories, fewer selections on store shelves, and higher prices in some cases.
THE LINER’S PERSPECTIVE
Michael Britton, head of North America market, ocean products, for containership operator Maersk, says his company came through the early part of 2025 generally optimistic about the global economy and expected global container growth of 4% this year. Fast forward to summer, and the company added downside risk to its forecast, introducing a range from -1% to +4% for volume growth. “That depends on trade policy as much as anything else,” he says.
On the positive side, Britton notes that “consumer [spending] seems to be reasonably healthy so far, particularly in North America.”
The current unsettled tariff situation “certainly presented us with some challenges,” he says. “The good news is that we have been preparing for some time for the realization that we can’t predict when the next shock to the global supply chain will be. But it will be something.”
That reality was part of the drive behind Maersk’s redesigning its operations into a more modular network, which it calls Gemini and has rolled out with fellow containership operator Hapag-Lloyd.
When tariffs hit in April, “there was definitely a drawdown in volumes, anywhere from 25% to 30%, primarily out of Asia,” Britton notes. (Volumes subsequently rebounded when reciprocal tariffs were paused.)
In response to the drawdown, Maersk shifted tonnage from trade lanes where there were smaller TEU (twenty-foot equivalent)-capacity ships and put those vessels into the lower-demand Asia-U.S. trade. Those smaller vessels replaced larger ships that previously served that route, with the larger vessels similarly repositioned into other lanes.
“That allowed us to match the container demand with the right supply at the right time and reposition the larger ships where they could be more useful,” he notes, adding that the overall goal was to react quickly and manage the fleet in a way that maintained its integrity and did not compromise reliability.
“It was about identifying where there were going to be shocks to the system and moving ships around so we could still maintain the same transit times, port frequencies, and coverages that customers signed up for,” Britton explains. “I’m really proud of our team and how we responded to the challenge and kept utilization as high as we could reasonably achieve,” he says.
Maersk’s fleet is composed of more than 700 vessels (both owned and time-chartered), representing about 4.5 million TEUs of capacity and serving over 500 ports worldwide.
In his discussions with customers, Stuart Sandlin, president of North America for containership operator Hapag-Lloyd, is hearing a similar tone of cautious optimism—and a desire for the tariff negotiations to be finally settled soon. “Most of the customers I talk to are staying the course,” he notes. “The U.S. Federal Reserve says the economy is looking very foggy … when it’s foggy outside, you just drive slower and maintain the course,” he quips.
As increased cargo flows begin to hit U.S. ports, “what we are really watching now is what happens to port fluidity. Is discharge volume consistent?” he asks. “Can port infrastructure continue to handle that surge in volume and move it through so it does not disrupt supply chains inside the U.S.?”
Another indicator Sandlin is watching is dwell times for discharged boxes at the ports and how the cost of tariffs may be affecting that. “If containers are not being picked up promptly or are delayed in port, [it could be] because the [small or medium-sized business] doesn’t have the cash to cover the [increased] tariff. If they don’t have the capital to pay for the box, it will sit there.”
He cites the example of a customer who was paying a tariff of $80,000 per import container earlier this year. In April, the tariff went up to $250,000. That’s a scenario that could ripple through supply chains, causing delays and congestion at ports. That also could foreshadow larger financial implications, which Sandlin described as “a lack of available capital moving through the system” as shippers struggle to manage their cash flow in the face of dramatically higher tariffs.
Nevertheless, Sandlin is pleased with how Hapag-Lloyd has responded in the current market and maintained both adequate capacity and reliable sailings in the face of unprecedented uncertainty. The company did not blank any sailings. Rather, it optimized and moved different-sized vessels among lanes to match demand, and, he says, “put the same amount of steel in the water with more cargo. “You model out the network, then you discover things you didn’t plan correctly. Then you recalibrate,” he notes.
Hapag-Lloyd deploys a fleet of 308 container ships with total transport capacity of 2.4 million TEUs supported by 14,000 employees at around 400 offices in about 140 countries.
“We try to be nimble; with the Gemini cooperation [with Maersk], we aim for 90% on-time reliability,” he adds. That reliability means shippers need less buffer stock [and] have lower inventory carrying costs and better cash flow. “We did not blank any sailings, just downsized the ships we used to provide a consistent flow for supply chains,” he adds. “We’re very proud of that.”
