Supply Chain Digest Says...   The Port of LA alone expects 20 blank sailings in May, which would normally involve some 250,000 containers, up from just six in April.     What do you say?   Click here to send us your comments       Click here to see reader feedback

With a variety of tariffs for imports to the US – including a whopping 145% on goods from China – have or are about to take effect, not surprisingly the added costs are showing up in a variety of numbers, especially for port operations.

For example, according to an article this week in the UK’s Financial Times, the Port of Los Angeles, which handles more shipping containers from China than any other US port, expects ship arrivals in the week starting May 4 to be a third lower than a year ago, while airfreight handlers have reported sharp falls in bookings.

The FT adds that bookings for 20-foot shipping containers from China to the US were 45% lower than a year earlier by mid-April, according to the latest available data from container tracking service Vizion.

In other numbers, the FT reports that large German container line Hapag-Lloyd said Chinese shippers had cancelled about 30% of their bookings out of China.

Meanwhile, Taiwanese container shipping company TS Lines has suspended one of its Asia to US west coast services in recent weeks.

Also, the maritime analysts Sea-Intelligence, this week reported a surge in “blank sailings”, meaning scheduled container ships from China were being cancelled.

Almost 400,000 fewer containers are booked on Asia to North America routes during the four weeks from May 5 than planned — a 25% drop from the amount scheduled for the same period at the start of March, before tariffs were imposed. There’s more.

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The Port of LA alone expects 20 blank sailings in May, which would normally involve some 250,000 containers, up from just six in April.

However, export container numbers from countries such as Cambodia and Vietnam that are enjoying a 90-day “pause” in tariffs are rising.

Container prices reflect that change, according to data from logistics hub Freightos, with a 15% increase in the price of a 40-foot container from Vietnam compared with a 27% on major China-US routes, the FT reports.

Finally, Knight-Swift Transportation, one of the largest US truckload carriers, warned investors it will see lower volumes, citing uncertainty caused by the tariffs threat.

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