by Lloyd's List
15 July 2025 (Lloyd's List) - LOOK at the Port of Los Angeles’ June imports in isolation and you might think all is rosy amid the steepest US tariffs since the 1930s.
Imports came in at 470,450 teu, the highest ever for the month of June, exceeding the previous peak in June 2021, during the pandemic boom. It was the best June in Los Angeles on record for total throughput as well.
July is looking even better. LA handled five extra loaders last month and there are already seven on the books for this month. The port is expecting total throughput for July of around 950,000 teu, up 6% from June.
And yet, looks can be deceiving.
The current surge is nothing more than a timing effect. Cargo fell sharply in May and the first half of June, then accelerated during the tariff reprieve window. The expectation is that July will mark an early peak for the year, followed by declines.
Speakers during the port’s monthly press conference on Monday gave both a macro and micro look at what’s happening with tariffs, and the takeaway was wholly negative for container shipping demand.
On the macro front, port executive director Gene Seroka gave the high-level view on trends in import flows. On the micro side, Bobby Djavaheri, president of Yedi Houseware in Los Angeles, gave a damning perspective on how the tariff policies of US president Donald Trump are affecting small and medium-sized businesses.
The big picture
“We continue to be in for a bumpy ride ahead,” warned Seroka.
June imports surged 36% versus those in May, but May’s imports were down 19% versus April’s. Los Angeles’ June imports were up 10% year on year, but combined May-June imports were flat versus the same period last year.
“It also matches our five-year average,” said Seroka of the last two months. He said that fluctuations “highlight the whipsaw effect” of tariffs on China. Aggregate tariffs on China surged to around 165% for cargoes arriving in May, and are now at around 50%.
The National Retail Federation is forecasting that US imports in August-November will be down 18% versus August-November 2024, when volumes were strong due to frontloading, but also down 7% versus the same period in 2023, when volumes and freight rates were weak.
“Overall, I’m with the NRF,” said Seroka. “If nothing changes, we’ll probably see a drop-off in cargo beginning in August.
“For US retailers and manufacturers, uncertainty reigns. Retailers are unlikely to order high volumes speculatively and US consumers are likely to see lower inventory, fewer selections and higher prices as we head into the holidays.”
Trump is taking a highly transactional approach to trade deals. According to Seroka, “This is not a transactional business. This is a capital-intensive business on the supply side.
These contracts go for long durations. We’re not set up like this. Knowing the cost structure is really important.”
The small business perspective
Djavaheri’s business is a drop in the bucket for container lines — a mere 50 to 100 boxes per year. But small and medium-sized businesses play a significant role in US container trades.
According to the latest Census Bureau data, there are more than 240,000 importing companies in the US and 40% have fewer than 20 employees. Add up all the companies like Djavaheri’s and it’s more than a drop in the bucket.
He didn’t pull any punches on how Trump 2.0 is affecting businesses like his.
“With President Trump’s second term, we anticipated tariffs, maybe 10-20% maximum. We didn’t think anything beyond that would be even possible. Because we thought tariffs were coming, we decided to front-load some inventory in January,” he said.
“In January, our warehouse should be empty after Christmas, but it looked like November, because we were stocking up in anticipation of tariffs. We like to carry inventory of three months at a time. I brought in five months of inventory.”
What happened next shocked Djavaheri, whose company sources goods from China. The incremental 145% tariffs “was an embargo, and unfortunately, we had a few containers that got hit with that”.
“We’re going to have a very bad year, and we’re going to have losses for sure, because I can tell you, there are hundreds of thousands of dollars that are going to the federal government out of my pocket — not from the Chinese, as the president has suggested so many times.
“I’m a conservative,” said Djavaheri. “I hold conservative values and principles. MAGA folks like to speak about short-term pain for long-term gain, but let’s define short. When folks say short-term pain, they don’t understand that if you have a small to medium-sized business that is spending hundreds of thousands of dollars [on tariffs], that could be the profit margin for a few years.
“I’m just one business that is feeling this so-called short-term pain, and I’m telling you it might take me a couple of years to get out of it. How do you think the ripple effect of that is going to affect others?
“Everything is made in China. I say to MAGA folks: whether you like it or not, everything is made there. What do you expect? That Generation Z is going to work on a production line making air fryers from seven o’clock in the morning until seven o’clock at night? Give me a break.
“We are the collateral damage here. Small and medium-sized businesses are collateral damage.
“To the MAGA folks, I’d say: it’s okay to have the courage to say you’re a proud MAGA but you disagree with this policy. This should not be a party-line issue. This is an American issue. It impacts all of us.”
Djaveheri pointed to a recent response to the NRF from a US senator stating that “the president doesn’t make mistakes”. “That’s insane,” said Djaveheri.
On US politicians, he said, “You are here to support us. We’re here to trust you, but you’re implementing policies that affect how we make money. I feel like I’ve been stabbed in the back by my own government.
“Businesses do not do well with unpredictability. Businesses try their hardest to predict the future, to forecast their numbers, their landed cost of goods, their profits margins. And under these circumstances, it’s literally impossible to forecast anything. I’m just one business, but I’m telling you: none of us can forecast anything. And how does that affect the economy and overall GDP?”
Djavaheri said he was not surprised that Trump backed down on China tariffs in May.
“Why do you think he did that in May? Well, here’s an interesting story. We’re one of the top-two dinnerware replenishers for TJ Maxx in the United States. Their department head told me, a week before the president made his announcement: ‘Christmas is in jeopardy.’
“If the department head of the dinnerware business of TJ Maxx is telling me, a small business, that Christmas is in jeopardy, the Walmart and Target CEOs are knocking on the Oval Office door and saying, ‘Hey, Mr. President, lower this embargo because we’ve got to put our fourth quarters orders in.’ So, that was predictable. We knew he was going to bring it down because people had to put their Christmas orders in production.”
Executives of Walmart said on their latest conference call that they would some increase prices to counterbalance tariffs, which led to pushback from Trump. Other large retailers have since been more circumspect, fearing political fallout.
Djavaheri was not circumspect.
“Of course we’ve raised our prices,” he said. “Everyone has. All of my retailers and consumers expected it. There has been no pushback.
“We raised prices about 10% and absorbed the rest. It’s simply not possible to pass all of it on, because folks aren’t going to buy the product, especially in our business, where some of our products — electronics and dinnerware — are very small-margin businesses. The tariffs we’re paying are way more than 10 years of what this company has ever paid.”
The concern for container shipping lines is that because some of the tariffs cannot be passed along, US importers will reduce their orders. Djavaheri confirmed this negative effect in response to a question from Lloyd’s List on how tariffs will affect 2H25 ordering.
“We have hundreds of SKUs [stock keeping units] affected by tariffs. We’ve been carefully picking and choosing which SKUs to bring in that we can turn at a better pace.
“Small electronics is a very cutthroat business with very, very small margins. So, these are probably going to be halved in imports, or maybe down more than half. That business is going to suffer. The dinnerware business imports will probably be down 20-30%.”
