by Lloyd's List

27 May 2025 (Lloyd's List) - TRANSPACIFIC carriers are rushing to add more capacity on the trade lane to capitalise on a surge in cargo demand prompted by the temporary pause of the China-US trade war.

Analyst Sea-Intelligence has noted a 5% injection of liner capacity on the trunk east-west trade to the US west coast over the past week alone. This though is just the beginning.

Carriers are expected to look to maximise tonnage on the route in the coming weeks, as the market fundamentals on the trade shift decisively.

Earlier this month, following talks in Geneva, Switzerland, the US and China agreed a 90-day reprieve on reciprocal tariffs, effectively granting a window of opportunity for shippers to shift the mass of Chinese cargo bound for the US, which had been lying in wait until some form of trade truce was reached.

The issue for carriers is that in light of elevated levies on China-US cargoes, weak demand had led to a significant reduction of capacity, including a series of blanked sailings and the redeployment of vessels to other trades.

Sea-Intelligence said that this would explain why in the immediate week after the trade truce there was “not much in the way of meaningful capacity injection”, as a consequence of the “simple practicalities related to un-blanking already blanked sailings”.

With capacity continuing to be released, analysts expect lines to add a further 11% of capacity to the Asia-US west coast trade over the course of this week, and yet another 18% in the second week of June.

“If the strength of the transpacific demand spike continues, we should expect the carriers to shuffle their networks to inject even more capacity to also fill up the gap in the middle of June,” said Sea-Intelligence.

While capacity heading to ports on the US Pacific seaboard is expected to accelerate, there is little change expected in supply headed for the US east coast, at least in the near term.

Sea-Intelligence said that this could imply that the surge in cargo demand is concentrated largely to the west coast, with “shippers eager to get the cargo to the US as rapidly as possible — possibly to lower the risk of new changes to the tariffs.”

However, it also noted that could also be explained by vessel availability, as it would take longer for carriers to inject suitable capacity.

With demand likely to continue to surge, Sea-Intelligence said that yet further injections of capacity above those already announced could not be ruled out in the coming weeks.

Shortly after conducting analysis, Maersk and Hapag-Lloyd announced the launch of their new TP9/WC6 Gemini service calling Long Beach via Busan and Xiamen. Vespucci

Maritime founder and chief executive Lars Jensen noted in a LinkedIn post that this could add a further 1.2% of new capacity on the transpacific trade on its own.

With slot space tight on the transpacific, spot rates have surged in line with the demand spike.

On the Shanghai Containerised Freight Index, spot prices to the US east coast from China have jumped nearly 30% over the past two weeks, while to the US west coast they have grown close to 40% since the trade truce was announced.

This surge in spot rates will only incentivise carriers to deploy more of the capacity in their armouries toward the trade, said Sea-Intelligence.

“The question is whether this will lead to an increase in blank sailings elsewhere, in order to use the vessels on the transpacific.”

While shippers can expect to pay a premium on Chinese cargoes into the US, the other issue they are likely to face is disruption to cargo consignments.

Given the sheer number of ships making the trip over the course of the next few weeks, Jensen told Lloyd’s List that congestion at major US ports is not just likely but “almost an inevitability”.

“It’s not a question of whether you get congestion. It’s a matter of how much.”