Booking a container slot on freighters heading to the United States from China has been not easy these days as American business owners are seizing the extraordinary opportunity presented by the 90-day tariffs pause to purchase enough inventory of Chinese goods in fear of growing policy uncertainty.
According to a joint statement released by the world's two largest economies following the meeting on May 12, both sides agreed to a 90-day tariff pause, during which U.S. tariffs on Chinese imports will be reduced from 145 percent to 30 percent, while Chinese tariffs on U.S. goods will be cut from 125 percent to 10 percent.
The U.S. purchasers' accelerated stockpiling has been keeping the Yantian Port busy. Located in south China's Shenzhen City, Guangdong Province, it handles over 40 percent of Chinese exports to the U.S. market.
The released video showed that on Friday, cranes at the port were busy loading 20,000 TEU containers onto the freighters heading to the United States.
A distribution center near the port was also packed with goods and the cargo volumes handled by its warehouses increased by 60 percent.
A shipping route manager said currently, booking a container slot on ships to the United States is not easy.
"Basically, every day, we wake up and start working immediately. We are now booking container slots scheduled all the way to the end of June," said Dong Ying, manager of south China-North America shipping route at Longsail International Logistics Company Limited.
The surge in freight transport demand has driven up shipping costs on China-U.S. routes, and analysts say international shipping companies need time to increase their transport capacity.
"The shipments need to be delivered rapidly in the following month to meet the pending order. Previously, many shipping companies have moved some of their transport capacity to routes to Europe or to the Latin American countries and they may need time to recover the capacity on the shipping lines to the United States. This will delay the products' arrival on the U.S. market and I believe, the shipping companies, the ports and the container manufacturers are currently working on this," said Li Cong, executive vice president, Cross-border E-commerce and Overseas Warehousing Branch, China Association of Warehousing and Distribution (CAWD).
The logistic workers at Yantian Port said there is noticeable rise in U.S. orders for festival goods as some of the country's business owners are accelerating stockpiling for the remaining festivals of this year.
"Many of the U.S. business owners are taking opportunity of the 90-day tariffs pause to accelerate stockpiling, so China's foreign trade merchants are sending out large amount of products in a relatively short period of time, leading to a significant rise in freight transport demand," said Yuan Qian, a researcher at the Institute of Foreign Economic Research under the Chinese Academy of Macroeconomic Research.
China's shipping routes to US overbooked as American businesses accelerate stockpiling
