Peak Season Imports to Fall Nearly 20 Percent

Container trade imports will fall 20 percent in August and September and another 18 percent in October, pushing overall retail imports for 2009 down to the lowest level since 2002, industry forecaster IHS Global Insight said in a report released Thursday.

In its Port Tracker report, released with the National Retail Federation, the group said the sharp pullback in peak season shipping will leave import shipping volume measured in TEUs down 18.8 percent in 2009 compared to last year. The 12.3 million 20-foot-equivalents IHS Global Insight estimates for imports into major retail container ports in the United States will be the fewest since 2002, when 11.6 million TEUs came into the ports.

“The national recession has clearly been reflected in the volume of cargo U.S. retailers have imported this year,” said Jonathan Gold, NRF vice president for supply chain and customs policy. “Numbers are down significantly, but the good news is that we’re expecting to move from double-digit declines into the single digits by the end of the year. That’s some light at the end of the tunnel that we’re really looking forward to seeing.”

Port Tracker estimates the first single-digit decline will be 3.8 percent in December. Throughout the rest of the year, drops have ranged from 15 percent to 32 percent.

U.S. ports surveyed handled 1.01 million TEUs in June, the most recent month for which actual numbers are available. That was down 22 percent from June 2008, marking the 24th month in a row to see a year-over-year decline.

“This year’s peak season is beginning with very weak import container volume, and even though traffic is slowly building, that’s going to be the case through the remainder of the year,” IHS Global Insight Economist Paul Bingham said.