According to a report on the shipping industry tracking site Vizion, there has been a “sudden April crash in bookings” for trade with the United States. The disappearance of bookings occurred in the first week of April, in comparison to those of the last week of March. The site breaks this down as a 64% drop in shipment bookings for U.S. imports from China; a 34% drop for U.S. exports to China; a 64% drop for overall U.S. imports; a 30% drop for overall U.S. exports; and a 49% drop in the global total of TEUs (20-foot equivalent units) booked in April for trade by container ship or truck.
The real drop in world trade is not nearly as large as this “freezing” of world trade shipments, because there was considerable pre-emptive shipment of inventory in the second half of 2024, especially following Trump’s election and especially by Chinese exporters, in anticipation of tariffs. But it shows the physical disruption underway in trade and related productive investment, which will worsen unless new government-to-government trade contracts are agreed upon by many nations.
