According to the monthly Global Port Tracker, issued by the National Retail Federation and Hackett Associates, imports at US retail container ports will keep being at record levels this month, despite the trade tension between China and the US.
In early August, President Trump announced that the US will start, on September 1st, putting an additional tariff of 10% on the remaining 300 billion Dollars of goods and products coming from China into the US. This does not include the 250 billion dollars already tariffed at 25%.
In light of the new tariffs, Hackett Associates Founder Ben Hackett noted that the import volumes will not be directly affected, and an increase to 25% is expected later in 2019.
Overall, the US ports handled 1.8 million TEUs in June, which was a decrease of 2.9% in comparison to May, and a 3% decrease year-over-year.
According to estimations:
- July would handle 1.86 million TEUs;
- August 1.91 million TEUs;
- September 1.85 million TEUs;
- October 1.91 million TEUs;
- November 1.84 million TEUs;
- December 1.81 million TEUs.
Also, according to NRF, the numbers expected during August and October would be the highest monthly volumes since 1.96 million TEUs last December.
While imports will decline year-over-year most months during the remainder of this year, that is largely because of high volumes seen last year as retailers rushed to bring in merchandise ahead of scheduled tariff increases.
Also, the H1 of 2019, the ports handled a total of 10.5 million TEUs, up 2.1 percent over the first half of 2018, and 2019 is expected to total 21.7 million TEUs.