U.S. Inbound Volume in February Lowest Since December 2023

The sixth straight month of meaningful declines occurred in February with inbound boxes at the 10 largest U.S. ports dropping 5.7% compared to last February.

Inbound In-depth

This comes after January’s 5.2% decrease and December’s 6.0% decrease. The three-month trailing figures came in at a 5.7% decrease in February, the same as January’s 5.7% decrease. In the latest month, the decline was particularly strong at East/Gulf Coast ports, which were down 8.8%. The total was buoyed by a 2.7% decrease at West Coast ports. That is the opposite of January that had West Coast ports down 12.0% while East/Gulf Coast ports were up 2.7%. The weak Chinese New Year and the varying coastal effects resulted from voyage time differences are drivers. We are now on course to have the longest monthly streak of U.S. inbound volume declines since container shipping began more than 50 years ago.     

The widening gap between volume trends in North America and the rest of the world continues. This can be seen in the graph below based on trailing three-month year over year changes during 2025 through January, the last month of available worldwide data. Based on that metric, North America went from a 5.5 percentage point overperformer at the beginning of 2025 to a 13.9 percentage point underperformer in January, an extraordinary swing of 19.4 percentage points. That metric is up from 11.5 percentage points in December.

Volume growth in all other regions remains robust and world trade is moving on. For instance, while North America inbound volume in January was down 8.1%, global volume grew 3.6%. While the IEEPA tariffs have been ruled unconstitutional, temporary additional tariffs have already been put in place and announced Section 301 investigations are telegraphing additional tariffs. The one-two punch of the drag on economic growth from less inbound volume to the U.S. and the inflationary impact of the continuing loads and the consumption tax they represent will be have an increasing negative impact on the economy in 2026.     

February’s overall inbound volume of 1,817,481 TEU’s was the lowest since December 2023 more than two years ago. It was sequentially 9.5% below January and that sequential decrease last January was slightly lower at 9.1%, another factual indication of the underlying downtrend in the volume data. These sequential comparisons benefit from recency, but the varying number of days in most months injects a 3-10% volume variance and there are also seasonal differences as you go from one month to another. Both of these facts make direct seasonally unadjusted comparisons not particularly relevant. However, the first of the group of seven tables towards the end of this report compares sequential comparisons to the same year ago sequential comparison. That is a more relevant way to analyze sequential variances that have the benefit of recency with the latest available data.          

Outbound In-depth

Total outbound volume from the U.S. in February increased 2.5%. In comparison, January was up 3.3% and December was down 2.8%. While outbound volume has shown an erratic pattern on a month-to-month basis for over a year, the broader trend has been fairly flat, evident by the 1.0% increase in trailing twelve-month volume.

Global Perspective

Worldwide container volume grew 3.6% year over year in January, some 8.8 percentage points or 880 basis points better than the 5.2% inbound volume decline to the U.S. that same month.

Another tangible indication of strength in other global markets is the January growth of imports in other major regions. Container imports to Africa (up 13.2%), Mideast/India (up 11.7%) and Australia (up 9.5%) were all robust as U.S. volume sank. January outbound volume from the U.S., the direction that is most directly associated with jobs, was slightly below the global average but well below many major regions. For example, in that same month Africa outbound volume was up 16.3%, Mideast/India outbound volume was up 10.5% and Far East outbound volume was up 5.8%.

The full year 2025 saw inbound volume coming in at 0.3% below 2024. That is a sharp contrast from the year earlier that had 2024 inbound volume being 15.2% above inbound loads in 2023. We expect there will be a noteworthy overall decline in 2026 resulting in the worst trendline related to actual container volume that has ever been experienced in the U.S. For a tangible metric that has consistently for decades grown above U.S. GDP, most often at two, three or even more multiples of GDP, the unusual nature of an actual decline in inbound container volume into the U.S. cannot be overemphasized.

The downward turn in 2025 was due solely to tariffs and unfortunately there is nothing at present that suggests it will be short-lived.

Economic Impact

These container volume reports not only telegraph future economic activity driven by the law of large numbers, but they will be a particularly useful tool into 2026 as they provide data to assess the impact of tariffs on both economic activity and growth as well as inflation.

To put into better context the commercial activity that is impacted from container volume declines, the total value of goods in containers moving in and out of all U.S. ports including the two dozen container ports outside of the Top 10 ports in February was $167.4 billion. That is the equivalent of $2.008 trillion in annualized economic activity.

Whether it involves increases or decreases, material changes in what is a meaningful portion of the U.S. economy will have pronounced positive and negative effects across the economy. For example, a 15% reduction in overall container volume from this point on based on tariffs is possible. Such a decrease would translate directly into a $301 billion reduction in annual commerce for the U.S.  

Pricing

The CTS global pricing index, the definitive measure of overall sector pricing, has come out for January and was at 77, unchanged from the same level in December. Both are 1.3% above the November level of 76. The January index was 2.3% above the actual 4Q25 average of 75.3, 6.2% below the actual 3Q25 average of 80.3 and 6.7% below the actual 2Q25 average of 80.7. From its recent monthly peak level of 118 in July 2024 the global pricing index has generally been declining since then.

Note that the CTS global pricing index uses actual 2008 rates as the base set to 100 and they are not inflation adjusted. The CTS global pricing index level and trend is the most credible measure of sector pricing and the most relevant pricing index to use in any projection of industry results.

The latest readings on the SCFI index, the most closely followed spot index measure, augment overall pricing insight into the container sector. Pricing in most container lanes involving the U.S. shows trends similar to those in broader measures as the lanes are invariably linked in what is really a single pricing matrix. While there are credibility issues with the various spot pricing indices based on how they are determined and who provides input, they do provide information on the direction and trend of pricing. The SCFI began trending down last December and has generally been in a downtrend. However, in the last few weeks it has spike up as pricing has tightened related to the hostilities in the Middle East. The latest SCFI reading of 1710 on March 13 is 20.8% above the 4Q25 level of 1415 and 15.5% above the 3Q25 level of 1481.

The following chart shows the average monthly level of both the CTS global pricing index and the SCFI over the last seven years benchmarked against the actual 4Q19 average level. As is readily apparent from looking at this chart, most contracts, which typically have one-year terms, did not reset at the then current spot rate when they were renewed. That speaks for itself in terms of highlighting differences other than timing between the CTS global pricing index and the SCFI. There has recently been more of an immediate linkage between the two measures and that is a result of more contracts now that have provisions where contract pricing is not fixed and can be adjusted due to changes in specific indices within the contract year.

Shifting Port Traffic

The West Coast ports have outperformed the East/Gulf Coast ports in 21 of the last 31 months. Those 1 months that were the exceptions were a return to the period that saw a streak of 26 straight months where the East/Gulf Coast ports out-performed West Coast ports.

February showed a 6.1 percentage point coastal gap favoring West Coast ports based on an 2.7% decrease at West Coast ports compared to the 8.8% decrease at East/Gulf Coast ports. The February gap was well East/Gulf Coast advantages of 14.7 percentage points in January and 6.6 percentage points in December.         

The trailing three-month figures give a clearer picture of trends and the recent westward shift that has now abated. In February, they showed the East/Gulf Coast ports with an advantage of 5.3 percentage points compared to 10.4 percentage points in January and 8.9 percentage points in December. That is the seventh straight month East/Gulf Coast ports were ahead and a sharp contrast to the 25.8 percentage point record West Coast advantage for the three months ending November 2023. Only ten of the last thirty-one periods had East/Gulf Coast ports outperforming on this metric. The West Coast advantages go back to September 2023 and East/Gulf Coast ports had the advantage during the prior 29 months.

Ports with the strongest February performance were Los Angeles (up 5.0%), Houston (up 0.4%) and Long Beach (down 0.2%). The ports with the weakest performance were Seattle/Tacoma (down 29.5%), Charleston (down 21.9%) and Oakland (down 18.6%). Those declines are the largest drops at those ports in 33, 34 and 32 months, respectively.

Tariffs imposed by the U.S. on imports invariably result in countervailing tariffs on exports and that will continue to put downward pressure on outbound volume. The tariffs initiated in the first Trump administration were smaller and primarily focused on China and they did result in countervailing tariffs. The ultimate impact of those tariffs and the resulting countervailing tariffs was that inbound container volume was less impacted than outbound container volume. Reductions in outbound container volume can be linked to 10 million U.S. jobs that are directly linked to exports.

With February outbound volume up 2.5% and inbound volume down 5.7%, there was an 820-basis point directional gap in favor of outbound compared to gaps of 860 basis points in January and 320 basis points in December. February was in sharp contrast with the average 580 basis point gap by which inbound growth has exceeded outbound growth over the last 67 months.

With exports, only 26 of the last 72 months have shown year over year gains, with a 1.3% average monthly decline over the period. While total inbound loads this February were 18.3% above what they were seven years ago during February 2019 for a 2.4% CAGR, total outbound loads were 0.1% less that resulted in a negative 0.02% CAGR. That 240-basis point difference in directional growth rates over a seven-year period is a noteworthy divergence in the overall performance of exports compared to imports over the same period. The January metric was below the 310-basis point difference in January and the 340-basis point difference in December.              

Total inbound loads were 2.21 times outbound loads in February, well below the 2.51 ratio in January and also below the 2.33 ratio in December. The 2.21 times metric for the most recent month is a noteworthy decline from the trailing 12-month average of 2.37 times.

The actual data continues to demonstrate that the operating port structure leads to superior results compared to the landlord port structure. Comparing this February to February 2019, on the import side the operating port growth rate of 4.3% was 260-basis points above the landlord port growth rate of 1.7%. That represented a 40-basis point expansion from the 220-basis point difference by which operating ports led in January. With exports, the operating port growth rate of 2.4% was 430 basis points better than the landlord port growth rate of negative 1.9%. January represented a 50-basis point expansion compared to the 380-basis point metric in January.