United States-bound imports saw growth in April, according to data recently issued by S&P Global Market Intelligence.
The firm reported that April imports, at 2.78 million TEU (Twenty-Foot Equivalent Units), increased 10.3% annually, matching March’s annual gain percentage. On a year-to-date basis through April, imports are up 7.9% annually, at 10.93 million TEU. As previously reported, total first quarter imports at 8.14 million TEU, saw a 9.1% annual increase (first quarter numbers come with a caveat, according to S&P Global Market Intelligence, due to 2024 being a leap year and having one less day in February 2025 making that annual data “understated,” it said).
In its data, S&P Global Market Intelligence explained that, “while the impact of U.S. tariffs is likely to slash the volume of trade going into May, the higher-than-expected reciprocal tariffs will not have affected imports early in April,” adding that “the overall rate of growth slowed to 9.1% year-over-year in the last two weeks of April.”
Consumer goods imports, excluding autos, increased 17.5% annually in April, while declining 8.7% over the second half of the month, with consumer electronics and leisure goods among the worst-performing sectors, with the former seeing a downturn over the second half of the month.
Capital goods imports saw only 2.9% annual growth, falling to 0.2% over the second half of April, driven by what the firm called an accelerating downturn in electrical equipment shipments, partially due to tariffs on energy storage and solar power systems.
Information technology imports were off 4.8% annually over the second half of April, following an 11.3% March gain, with S&P pointing out that the segment is dealing with uncertainties related to the White House’s Section 232 review of semiconductors and derived products.
In an interview, Chris Rogers, Head of Supply Chain Research for S&P Global Market Intelligence, explained that with the White House announcing its reciprocal tariffs plan on April 2, anything that was going to happen in the first half of April was already factored in.
“Nobody was really expecting that higher level of tariffs, so it was not a surprise, in terms of the kind of the level of shipping coming into the country was still fairly strong,” he said. “It was only really in the back half of the month that we started to see products maybe being put into bonded warehouses or being diverted to other countries, or, frankly put, just the start of a slowdown that was going to happen anyway. We’d always talked about how in the first quarter people will rush to get goods in, just in case President Trump does something else. What we saw in April was a lot of the fundamental inertia that exists within shipping networks, which we saw in the back half of the month, with things starting to slow down. We start to see the anecdotal data from the ports on the West Coast and from the export surveys that we have and start to see that that turnaround.”
Looking at the U.S.-China trade relationship, in light of recent developments regarding the counties lowering respective tariffs on each other for 90 days, through August 12, Rogers likened it to moving overnight from a situation in which Peak Season kind of runs late. The reason for that, he said, if shippers think high tariffs are going to stay, they wait until the last minute to move cargo just in case something happens, whereas now, for the next 90 days, they can import at a 10% rate, but after that the rate is unknown and could remain at 10% or significantly higher. And he added that based on last week’s U.S.-U.K. trade agreement, it is clear that no countries will be seeing anything less than a 10% tariff.
“If you can get a 10% tariff on China today, you will take that all day long,” he said. “I would imagine the phones in China are ringing off the hook, with shippers looking to move cargo now. And front loading in a higher interest rate environment is not very attractive, because you’ve got to sit on this stuff, paying your bank 6% or 7% for the cost of interest on that early. But if you compare that to potentially paying 34% instead of 10% or maybe even more, you’re definitely going to move early. This brings Peak Season way forward if people can get the product out the door. Because, again, if you put the order in now, it’s still going to take time to produce it, still going to take time to ship it. But 90 days is just about long enough.”
