The Global Port Tracker report by the National Retail Federation and Hackett Associates provides data on US port import volumes. February saw a 5.2% increase year-over-year with 2.06 million TEUs. March is projected to rise to 2.14 million TEUs, an 11.1% increase year-over-year.

Starting in May, a downturn is anticipated. May’s volume is expected to drop to 1.66 million TEUs, a 20.5% decrease year-over-year, ending 19 months of growth. June’s forecast is 1.57 million TEUs, a 26.6% decline, marking the lowest since February 2023. July and August are predicted at 1.69 million TEUs (-27% y/y) and 1.7 million TEUs (-26.8% y/y) respectively.

Overall, a 15% decrease in 2025 cargo volumes is expected. These predictions exclude recent changes to electronics tariffs, affecting shipping industry projections. TEU, or Twenty-foot Equivalent Unit, is a shipping industry standard to measure cargo volume.

The figures from the Global Port Tracker, compiled by Hackett and the National Retail Federation, paint a very clear picture. After a period of elevated import activity through much of 2023 and into the early months of this year, trade volumes are strongly tilting downward beginning May. That month is expected to show a marked 20.5% drop compared with the same time last year. The estimated 1.66 million TEUs would represent a full halt to nearly two years of volume growth. The following months reinforce the downtrend, with June through August foreseen to hover between 1.57 and 1.7 million TEUs — all at least a quarter lower year-on-year.

So what do these numbers really tell us? The shipping trade is shifting gears. Traders who watch derivatives activity and base expectations on port throughput must not treat this as a mild dip but recognise it as a broader contraction in physical demand—one linked to weakened freight orders, reduced warehousing needs, and lighter containerised traffic.

Hackett’s outlook for a 15% full-year drop in cargo during 2025 adds weight to that. It’s vital we view the spring and summer downturns not as isolated instances but within this longer declining trajectory. It suggests retail inventory-building is slowing after prior overordering, and that consumption trends are stabilising rather than expanding. The delayed impact of tariffs on electronics imports, still not reflected in these projections, is likely to dampen monthly figures further if enforced in the coming quarters.

With this knowledge, positioning must reflect not just weaker volume projections but the timing of the shift. April may still land above 2 million TEUs, but as that support vanishes, so too will assumptions of near-term growth. We need to be wary of lingering optimism in the weekly movements leading into June. Lagging indicators can mislead. This is where short-term contracts may misprice risk.

There’s also a gap between current sentiment and the structural fall in forward bookings. The lead times between shipping manifests and port arrival mean that what appears manageable in April may in fact foreshadow deeper weakness through late Q2 and Q3. These data are not just abstract percentages — they reflect real declines in goods entering key gateways, and by extension in truckload demand, container leasing durations, and port facilities usage. Spot rates are responding unevenly, but they will have to correspond to the incoming wave of underutilisation.

For our part, we should model margins tightly. The ceiling on seasonal recovery has likely passed. The summer cargo cycle is pointing not merely to softening but to compression. Short gamma exposures will need close monitoring against weekly revisions in actual port call data, especially as tariff announcements are digested.

Reading the numbers above, and placing them beside prior seasonal patterns, it’s clear the floor is lower than traders grew used to in 2023. Freight volatility tends to spike not in deceleration, but in transitions. We are looking at the early stages of that now — a shift from annual growth into a deepening deceleration. We need to adjust accordingly, contract by contract, rate by rate.