Asian imports to the U.S. have fallen dramatically as businesses respond to the high tariffs placed on goods from China.
According to a recent report from the maritime research platform Sea-Intelligence, the number of “blank sailings”—scheduled voyages canceled by the carrier—from Asia to the U.S. have risen as a result of President Donald Trump’s tariff announcements.
For the period covering April 14 to May 11, the firm found that the number of blank sailings on the transpacific route had risen from the equivalent of about 60,000 containers in late March to 250,000 the week following Trump’s “Liberation Day” tariff announcements. In the second week of April, the figure had increased to 367,800.
Why It Matters
The dramatic decline in shipments between Asia and the U.S., which Sea-Intelligence attributes to the “extremely volatile” political climate and the uncertainty caused by the tariffs, gives an insight into how significantly and swiftly the administration’s policies may affect global trade.
As well as highlighting firms’ reluctance to accept the new import taxes and a decline in the overall demand for imported goods, the drop could weigh on the U.S. economy and labor market, particularly their import-reliant sectors.
What To Know
According to Sea-Intelligence CEO Alan Murphy, the dramatic collapse of U.S.-bound shipments from Asia is due to the uncertainty surrounding global trade. Murphy said shipping lines and cargo owners were likely “adjusting their short-term supply chains for now and waiting for things to settle down (one way or another), before making longer-term network adjustments.” He added that transatlantic trade was “largely holding steady.”
Asian nations have been among those hit hardest by Trump’s reciprocal tariffs, with countries such as Cambodia (49 percent), Vietnam (46 percent) and Sri Lanka (44 percent) being subject to some of the highest duties. On April 9, Trump announced that the reciprocal duties would be paused for 90 days for all countries besides China, whose exports now face a 145 percent tariff when entering the U.S.
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Certain companies have already warned that the tariffs will result in higher prices for consumers. Last week, e-commerce firms Shein and Temu enacted “price adjustments” to cope with what they described as the “recent changes in global trade rules and tariffs.”
Small-business owners have also taken to social media to express the difficulties they face because of the tariffs. They said the duties had raised their operational costs and jeopardized their business relationships with Asian vendors.
Daire Burke, the head of the business financing platform Swoop Funding North America, told Newsweek that clients had begun assessing whether they could relocate their operations to avoid the potential effects of the tariffs on China but had so far found that doing so would prove prohibitively difficult.
What People Are Saying
Alan Murphy, the CEO of Sea-Intelligence, said in an April 24 report: “The impact of the U.S. tariff war continues to have a direct impact on container shipping operations, as the number of canceled sailings on the Transpacific trade increased drastically yet again this past week. When we look at the data, it is quite evident that the impact of the trade war has caused many shippers to pause, or outright cancel, shipments. This in turn reduces demand for capacity on container vessels, to which carriers respond by canceling sailings.”
In the April 16 report on blank sailings, Murphy wrote: “The current political climate is extremely volatile and given that tariffs are being imposed and suspended on an almost daily basis, we assume that both the shipping lines and cargo owners are only adjusting their short-term supply chains for now and waiting for things to settle down (one way or another), before making longer-term network adjustments.”
Wayne Winegarden, a senior fellow in economics at the Pacific Research Institute, told Newsweek: [The reduction in imports] will hit the U.S. economy hard, particularly in L.A. and California where the ports and transportation industries will lose significant business revenues. These adverse impacts also illustrate that large costs arise from the extreme uncertainty the tariff policy creates in addition to just the policy itself.”
He added: “The initial impacts will be felt by the importing and transportation industries, but it will quickly spread to retailers and consumers. From there, the broader economic damage will grow. Because the economy is intertwined, the adverse job impacts will quickly become a broad-based economic downturn.”
Daire Burke, the head of Swoop Funding North America, told Newsweek: “In relation the China tariffs specifically, we are encountering many U.S. small businesses who have been actively assessing their supply chain and looking to markets such as Vietnam, India, Malaysia and even Europe as production alternatives. However, many are finding that other markets simply don’t have the infrastructure that China has, which has been developed over the past half century.”
He continued: “I can think of a client who recently found themselves in this scenario that needed their consumer product manufactured and coated under one roof and to exacting, complex and regulated standards. The client found that they couldn’t make one part in Vietnam, another in India and then complete the process in the EU. It simply didn’t work logistically and economically.”
Ryan Young, a senior economist at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, told Newsweek: “The Trump tariffs’ effects on shipping and trucking will be easy to see. Their downstream effects are harder to notice, but may actually be bigger. More than half of U.S. imports aren’t consumer goods, they’re intermediate goods that U.S. businesses use to make their products here in America. Retail shoppers will notice higher prices and fewer goods, and that will get most of the headlines. But businesses, especially smaller ones, will be paying more for components, machinery, and raw materials used in everything from cars to musical instruments to lighting fixtures.”
What Happens Next
While Trump’s 145 percent tariffs on China’s imports—and Beijing’s 125 percent retaliatory tariffs—remain in effect, trade tensions between the pair have eased in recent days. China has rolled back certain tariffs on semiconductor imports, while Trump has pledged to reduce the tariffs on China “substantially” and expressed optimism about reaching a U.S.-China trade deal in the near future.
