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Trump set to announce reciprocal tariffs on Wednesday

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Shipping companies concerned about potential drop in

demand

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Uncertainty over future policy moves fogs industry

response

By Lisa Baertlein, Victoria Waldersee and Renee Maltezou

LOS ANGELES/BERLIN/ATHENS, April 2 (Reuters) - U.S.

President Donald Trump's new tariff plan has the ocean shipping

industry on edge as he stokes a trade war destined to stanch

transport demand and send companies scrambling to manage the

fallout.

The Trump administration on Wednesday is set to announce

"reciprocal tariffs" targeting nations that have duties on U.S.

goods. That move would come after it slapped new import levies

on products from Mexico, China and Canada - the top U.S. trading

partners - as well as on goods including steel and autos.

Major global container shipping firms like MSC, Maersk

, CMA CGM and Hapag-Lloyd ( HLAGF ) transport

towering piles of colorful boxes stuffed with goods for U.S.

customers like Walmart ( WMT ), Target ( TGT ) and Home Depot ( HD )

.

They are giants in the roughly $14 trillion a year ocean

shipping industry that handles about 80% of global trade. They

are also reliant on companies that are getting whipsawed by

Trump's escalating, on-and-off tariffs.

"The implementation of stacked tariffs has led to mounting

confusion," said Blake Harden, the Retail Industry Leaders

Association's vice president of international trade. "Companies

have not had adequate time, certainty, and guidance they need to

incorporate these changes and comply."

Trump has invoked emergency powers to swiftly add, and

occasionally retract and reinstate, tariffs during his second

term in office.

"Importers don't know from one week to the next what their

duty cost is going to be," said Kit Johnson, director of import

compliance at John S. James Co., a U.S. customs broker and

freight forwarder whose customers include automakers and

producers of chemicals, machinery, medical devices and textiles.

Johnson has seen an uptick in customers opting for high-cost

air shipping for autos and other goods that normally would

travel by sea, in a bid to front-run new tariffs.

U.S. container imports have also surged to record levels in

recent months as companies rushed in toys, furniture, bedding,

machinery and parts from China, the world's No. 1 exporter, to

avoid Trump's tariffs.

As that threat expanded, other vessel types and airplanes

have been called to help U.S. firms stockpile cars from Europe

and the Far East, cheese and wine from Italy, and prescription

drugs from Ireland.

The average on-demand spot rate to ship a 40-foot container

on the key Far East to U.S. West Coast route was $2,844 on

Tuesday, a one-day gain of almost 16%, according to data from

freight pricing platform Xeneta. That rate is still lower than a

year ago, when the risk of Houthi attacks on Red Sea shipping

lanes was a new phenomenon and trading was not distorted by

importers seeking to avoid tariffs.

TARIFFS TAKE A BITE

But companies' knee-jerk, front-loading strategy is just a

temporary fix - especially as retaliatory tariffs stoke trade

wars that could suffocate demand.

The tariff tiffs come as ocean shipping faces greater

potential peril from a separate Trump plan to impose hefty U.S.

port call fees on ships with links to China.

Foes of that proposal say it could decimate domestic

agriculture and energy exporters that Trump promised to support.

They also warn it could reignite pandemic-level chaos at ports

by prompting vessel operators to avoid fees by swamping some

ports with cargo while starving others.

Layering that on top of tariffs has paralyzed

decision-making around how to source, sell and move goods.

"You cannot make important decisions on your supply chain

when the rules of the game keep changing," said Peter Sand,

Xeneta's chief analyst.

One Greek container shipping executive, who requested

anonymity due to fear that public comments could negatively

affect business, said customers were not loading cargo for fear

that a large levy might be imposed at the end of a lengthy ocean

voyage.

"We are in a wait-and-see mode."

Experts have begun counting the harm from Trump's tariffs.

Anxiety over the levies already has helped derail a

turnaround in the U.S. manufacturing sector that relies on

imports and exports and drives significant demand for

transportation, according to responses to the Institute for

Supply Management survey.

S&P Global Market Intelligence expects the volume of U.S.

ocean container freight imports to drop 0.7% in 2025.

"While there is still strong growth in the first quarter,

this is expected to reverse in the second quarter of 2025 as

tariffs bite," S&P said.

Meanwhile, U.S. Customs and Border Protection is scrambling

to reprogram and test systems needed to calculate and collect

new tariffs. The Trump administration in February delayed a plan

to begin collecting duties on direct sales of low-value goods

from retailers like Temu and Shein after packages piled

up at New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport.

"The more of these tariffs we have, the harder it's going to

be for everyone to keep up," customs broker Johnson said.