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National drayage providers experiencing a sharp decline in orders as US tariffs come into effect now warn that a second-half rebound could be just as disruptive.

The carrier and competitor Hapag-Lloyd announced strong financial results Wednesday, but both said the success of early 2025 won’t be replicated through the balance of the year given market headwinds linked to the global trade conflict.

After getting the year off to a solid start in the first quarter, Jens Lund said the real work begins now to bring the two global forwarders together under the DSV brand.

It is the second acquisition this week by a CMA CGM subsidiary following CEVA Logistics’ takeover of Turkish forwarder Borusan Tedarik, with both deals aimed at extending the carrier’s end-to-end supply chain control.

US ports and support infrastructure such as warehouses and rail connections aren’t better equipped to handle import surges than they were during the pandemic when record volumes drove congestion to historic highs, carrier executives said this week.

Direct services to Asia and the EU have pulled more resin cargoes away from Houston, but the Gulf Coast is still the main route to the South American market.

Container lines saw a first-quarter demand boost from US shippers eager to bring in cargo before the April implementation of the Trump administration’s tariffs.

Insufficient volumes, including on the lane between the Port of Virginia and Memphis, have forced the railroad to reallocate resources to areas where it believes container business will grow in the future.

Chartered flights from China to the US have been canceled and air freight traffic has declined as Washington prepares to scrap the duty-free exemption for low-value goods shipped from China and Hong Kong.

The issue of transit time variability in Latin America has downstream impacts for projects, with forwarders often having to get creative to figure out workarounds due to unforeseen delays.

With far fewer US-bound goods leaving Chinese docks, carriers have accelerated the raft of blank sailings and service suspensions that began earlier this month, sources tell the Journal of Commerce.

Rather than shift sourcing, some shippers are negotiating with suppliers to share the costs of increased US import tariffs, an international trade attorney told the Journal of Commerce’s Breakbulk and Project Cargo Conference.

If regulatory approval is achieved, the deal will nearly double the size of CMA CGM subsidiary CEVA Logistics’ footprint in a rapidly expanding region.

The flagship of Santos Brasil is Tecon Santos, the largest container terminal in South America with a capacity of 2.5 million TEUs that will soon be expanded to 3 million TEUs.

Shippers and service providers say much of the project cargo industry dodged a bullet with the latest US fee proposal targeting Chinese-built ships.

The unknowns surrounding US tariffs and proposed fees on Chinese tonnage are forcing shipowners to take a wait-and-see approach to ordering new vessels.

Speakers at the conference in New Orleans agreed that recent volatility has yet to significantly slow projects or investments in the project cargo sector.

The closure of freighter slots at the airport beginning in August is expected to last several months because of an estimated $1 billion investment plan launched by port operator Adani Airport Holding.

The latest deals will increase the total number of methanol-enabled ships Wan Hai has on order to 32, worth a total of almost $5 billion.

F. Paul De Maria will become the new CEO of the group representing ocean carriers and marine terminal operators at East and Gulf coast ports.

The award is less than the electronics giant sought in its complaint against Zim over detention and demurrage billing, a case that saw the judge chide Zim’s billing practices.

S&P Global’s Flash PMI for April, released Thursday, shows that economic output in the developed world hit its lowest point since 2023, boding poorly for container growth this year.

The companies say it is important to be agile with capacity deployment if there is a significant decline in volumes crossing the docks at Los Angeles and Long Beach amid the trade conflict with China.

Carriers and importers are dealing with confusion over how tariffs in general, and the trade war between Washington and Beijing specifically, will affect commerce on the US’ busiest trade lane over the next 12 months.

US tariffs on China and the 90-day pause on tariffs imposed by Washington on a host of other countries made it difficult to assess how the market would develop this year, according to the forwarder’s CEO.

The analyst downgraded its container handling outlook following similar moves on global and US economic growth by the IMF and WTO this week.

The president of the second-largest US LTL provider sees Amazon’s decision to offer its vendors LTL service as an opportunity for ODFL to move more retail freight.

Shippers need to collect and share accurate shipment data and even rethink some shipping processes ahead of July 19 changes to LTL classification, experts tell the Journal of Commerce.

The carrier said its Gemini Cooperation alliance with Maersk is not resorting to blanked voyages to deal with the downturn, but it did redeploy ships to deal with demand changes.

Amid the US-China trade dispute, inquiries for bonded storage north of the border have increased four-fold this month, according to one Canada-based third-party logistics provider.

Demand for light vehicles and components began 2025 on a sour note amid rising production costs, tariff uncertainty and projections for slower US economic growth.

HHG imports rose almost 20% in 2024, fueled in part by home remodeling, but US tariffs on China and Vietnam could reverse that gain.

Shippers and ocean carriers told the Journal of Commerce they are reviewing the USTR actions to estimate how the fees will flow down to freight costs.

US electronics imports are riding a wave of cyclical replacement, but tariffs could bring on an ebb tide.

Qatar, IAG and MASkargo plan to get their trilateral partnership off the ground as soon as regulatory approval is secured.

But executives at both northern range hubs highlighted the extreme volatility of the first three months and the US tariff-driven uncertainty that lies ahead.

Disruption caused by trade wars will reach deep into global supply chains, depressing an already uncertain outlook for the US freight economy.

The increase in blank sailings coincides with the Port of Los Angeles’ expectation that container volumes will plunge 14% month over month in week 18 and 38.6% in week 19.

The alcoholic beverage industry is in decline as consumer tastes change, which is being felt in the import business as it deals with flat volumes.

The very idea of the United States getting back into shipbuilding at scale shows an erosion in acceptance of the concept of global trade, specifically comparative advantage.