July’s Record Imports Are a Delivery Problem, Not Just a Tariff Problem

US container ports are forecast to handle 2.47 million twenty-foot equivalent units in July, according to the Global Port Tracker report released July 8 by the National Retail Federation and Hackett Associates. That would be an all-time monthly record, topping the 2.4 million TEU handled in May 2022 as the economy rebounded from the pandemic. The driver is not demand. It is the calendar.

The temporary 10 percent Section 122 global tariffs that took effect in February expire July 24, and the report notes that a new round of tariffs tied to forced labor is expected from the administration as early as August. Importers are moving goods now to land them before the rules change. Hackett Associates founder Ben Hackett attributed the surge to “frontloading ahead of expected tariff increases.” The monthly numbers trace the buildup: ports handled 2.24 million TEU in May, up 14.9 percent against a soft comparison from last year’s tariff disruption, and June is projected at 2.33 million TEU, up 18.7 percent. The nation’s largest gateway confirms the picture from the ground, with the Port of Los Angeles reporting 840,165 TEUs in May, up 17 percent year over year, and Executive Director Gene Seroka saying in a June briefing that the port expects to top 900,000 container units in both June and July. The Global Port Tracker expects May through July to stand as the highest three months of the year.

A record month is a crowded month, and carriers are charging for it

Most of the trade coverage stops at the cost implications, and for good reason: landed cost is the spreadsheet every importer is staring at. But a record import month has a second effect that matters more to anyone with delivery commitments. When every importer in the country pulls freight forward into the same eight weeks, they are all competing for the same vessel space, the same chassis, the same drayage capacity, and the same receiving appointments. That competition is no longer theoretical; it is priced. Drewry’s World Container Index reached $4,639 per 40-foot container on July 9, its highest level since September 2024, and in early July the index was running 61 percent above the same week last year. On the Transpacific specifically, Shanghai to Los Angeles spot rates stood at $6,482 per 40-foot container as of July 9 after climbing 10 percent the week before, and some carriers have announced general rate increases in the range of $2,000 to $3,000 per 40-foot container on the lane effective July 15, along with peak season surcharges. Drewry’s capacity tracking shows blank sailings continuing to constrain available slots. The report also notes that peak shipping season, which historically centered on October, has moved up in recent years. The buffer that used to separate the import peak from fall and holiday execution is gone. The freight racing the July 24 deadline arrives into the most congested and most expensive inbound environment of the year, at the moment back-to-school execution is live.

OTIF does not care why the container was late

For 1P suppliers, this is the month to treat inbound as execution risk rather than procurement strategy. A purchase order that misses its delivery window because the container sat behind forty others carries the same delivery-performance consequences as one that missed for any other reason. Transit reliability is also softer than the volume numbers suggest: the NRF release flags continued supply chain effects from the Iran conflict, and Seroka has said it will take shipping lines months to normalize schedules as Strait of Hormuz traffic recovers under the US-Iran framework agreement. Suppliers who pulled orders forward to beat the tariff deadline should be confirming bookings, watching for rolled sailings, and getting ahead of replenishment conversations the moment a load looks at risk, rather than explaining a miss after the fact. The saving captured by importing early is real, but it is denominated in duty avoided, and it can be quietly repaid in scorecard damage if the operational side is left to run itself.

For Marketplace sellers, the open window is August

The 3P calculation runs differently. Sellers who frontloaded holiday inventory are now carrying it, and storage costs accrue whether the tariff materializes or not. The more useful signal in the report is the downslope: imports are forecast to fall to 2.22 million TEU in August, down 4.5 percent year over year, then to 1.99 million in September and October and 1.92 million in November. That decline marks when port and inbound networks decongest, and while Drewry expects freight rates to stay elevated in the near term, falling volumes should eventually take some of the force out of the increases landing July 15. For sellers planning WFS inbound ahead of Q4, the report is effectively publishing a congestion map: the system is at its tightest right now and loosens from August forward, which makes late summer the cleaner window for positioning holiday inventory rather than fighting July’s record volume at July’s freight rates.

The tariff being raced may not arrive as scheduled

There is one more layer suppliers should hold onto, which is that the tariff calendar driving all of this is itself unsettled. The Supreme Court ruled against the administration’s 2025 emergency-powers tariffs earlier this year, as Retail Dive noted in its coverage of the report. Walmart, on its first quarter earnings call on May 21, said its guidance assumes no impact from IEEPA tariff refunds and estimated that the maximum recovery it could receive as importer of record would represent less than half of one percent of its US annual sales. The forced-labor tariffs prompting this month’s record are expected, not enacted. Frontloading, in other words, is insurance. The inventory carrying cost and the July freight premium are what that insurance costs, and suppliers should price it that way rather than treating the July rush as guaranteed arbitrage.

NRF Vice President for Supply Chain and Customs Policy Jonathan Gold observed in the release that back-to-school selling has already started and the winter holidays are close behind. By the report’s own forecast, the import peak of 2026 is happening right now, and by November, volumes are projected to run 5.2 percent below last year. The frontload will be long over by then. What will remain is the delivery record each supplier built during what is forecast to be the most crowded inbound month on record, and that record is being written over the next three weeks.

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