With trade between the world’s two largest economies effectively coming to a halt thanks to US president Donald Trump’s tariff war with China, containerlines are blanking sailings on a greater scale than was witnessed at the onset of the covid pandemic five years ago. The global trade outlook – as witnessed by planned blank sailings on the transpacific in the weeks ahead – is dire.
China responded 10 days ago to Trump’s cumulative 145% tariffs, placing 125% tariffs on US products, effectively foregoing business between the two countries.
Blank sailings occur when ocean carriers skip scheduled port calls due to low freight demand or equipment shortages, disrupting supply chains. In April 2025, over 80 blank sailings were reported, surpassing the 51 from May 2020, signalling a severe collapse in global shipping activity.
Looking at the carriers’ decisions to blank sailings is a good proxy, with which to assess how booking uptake unfolds, as a consequence of the trade war.
The Sea-Intelligence Blank Sailings Tracker measures, on a weekly basis, the number of planned sailings which are blanked for the coming 12 weeks, as well as the capacity taking out due to this blanking.
The latest data from Sea-Intelligence, described as “staggering” in a weekly report published yesterday, shows that carriers anticipate container demand for week 18, next week, on the Asia to US west coast trade lane will be 28% lower than expected, while for week 19, carriers are expecting shippers to move as much as 42% less cargo than anticipated on the Asia to US east coast trade lane.
It is evident that the impact of the trade war has caused many shippers to pause, or outright cancel, shipments. In turn, this reduces demand for capacity on container vessels and carriers respond by cancelling bookings,” Sea-Intelligence noted.
Judah Levine, head of research at Freightos, a box booking platform, commented: “The near term need to blank sailings out of China and possibly increase services from other origins may prove challenging for ocean carriers and cause delays for shippers, with empty containers concentrated in China likely to pose a challenge too.”
“For the smaller niche carriers, the trade war is particularly destructive,” Sea-Intelligence warned in an earlier report. “Most of them rely on large volumes from China on their services and are not well equipped to suddenly switch to alternate non-Chinese origin cargo. For some of these we can potentially expect full-service closures, for the duration of the trade war.”
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