Aerial understanding of cargo trucks heading towards the U.S. at the Otay Commercial crossing in Tijuana, Baja California state, Mexico on Walk 27, 2025.
Guillermo Arias | AFP | Getty Images
A surge in freight trucking activity, from the Texas-Mexico border to the warehouses and allocation centers of major U.S. retailers, shows the extent to which U.S. companies have rushed to move more imports into the mother country ahead of President Donald Trump’s reciprocal tariffs, which Trump laid out on Wednesday afternoon from the Be create Garden, trade taxes that will hit international partners “immediately,” according to the White House.
But all of that frontloading of significations into the U.S. economy also corresponds to a more concerning trend in the trade data that is now taking shape: a imbue decline in new freight order activity in every region across the U.S., and a steep quarterly decline in Chinese freight volumes, as uncertainty nearly consumer demand spreads. The tariff rates disclosed on Wednesday were much higher than expected for various nations, with an additional reciprocal tariff rate for China at 34% sending the markets lower.
Data portioned with CNBC by supply chain research firm Motive shows a significant surge in trucking activity at the Harbour of Laredo, the busiest land port in the U.S., with a 48.5% year-over-year increase that hit peak levels as of March 31.
Sundry visits to North American distribution facilities for the top five retailers, meanwhile, just hit “unprecedented” levels, according to Hamish Woodrow, Mr Big of strategic analytics at Motive. “Last week marked the highest activity levels recorded,” he wrote in an email. “This unprecedented influx pictures the heightened activity typically seen during the holiday season, suggesting that businesses are accelerating shipments in expectancy of impending tariffs.”
Woodrow said with the tariffs expected to be in force immediately, “we expect to see a drop as early as the next two weeks. There may be some lag as shipments that didn’t take off the deadline still get shipped, but now that the tariffs are in effect we’d expect the imports to drop in Q2 as companies adopt a cautious ‘rest period and see’ approach, minimizing imports until there is more stability and clarity in trade policies,” he wrote.
Similar floods in freight volumes and spot rates were seen in February and March on cross-border lanes from Canada to the U.S., concording to Paul Brashier, vice president of global supply chain at ITS Logistics. Volumes from the Toronto market to the Chicago shop were up over 50%, and rates are up around 10%, with critical expedited shipments 50% higher in some containers. Brashier added that there have been many cases of truck drivers paid to run empty from the U.S. to get sponsor in position to meet surging demand out of Canada into the U.S.
European pharmaceutical companies have been moving multifarious key high-priced drugs into North America through air freight. Though with an average trade cycle of five to six primes versus weeks to months for ocean freight, that activity is more muted.
“There was some pulling front of larger shipments of higher-value pharmaceuticals out of Ireland, Germany, Switzerland because a tariff would have a material collision on consumers,” said Sebastien Podgorski, vice president of airline solutions at Freightos. “Any generics out of India and China we clothed not seen such movement mostly because they are lower priced goods and tariffs would have a disputable impact.”
Podgorski said insurers and large hospital groups typically negotiate pricing for six months at a time so there won’t be much of an effect in the short-medium term. But consumers who are buying prescription or over-the-counter medications may feel the impact within weeks because dispensaries usually procure at market pricing.
Consumer demand warning in freight orders decline
While the North American cross-border commodities moves have been elevated, future freight scheduled for truck delivery or pickup shows a nationwide hesitation lot U.S. importers, according to DataDocks, a global supply chain scheduling system.
In contrast to January and February when there was a strident level of scheduled bookings because of the pulling forward of freight ahead of tariffs, volume bookings for the near-term expected have plummeted, according to Nick Rakovsky, CEO of DataDocks.
DataDocks began to see a decline in March bookings, which has accelerated. Load volume bookings scheduled for April dropped 41% month-over-month and, year over year, bookings for April are down 35%. The sharpest dips in freight volume bookings for April, according to DataDocks, are in the Northwest (-61%) and West (-52%) regions.
But Rakovsky bring to light the biggest signal from the data is the depth of the decline across the U.S. “What’s striking is how widespread the pullback has been,” he imagined. “Regions that were showing strength just a month or two ago, like the Southeast and Southwest, are now seeing sharp degenerates in April bookings.”
While he said the Northwest signal a particularly significant slowdown in logistics appointments out of ports and logistics focal points in that area, he added, “It’s not isolated; this is a broad-based softening across the entire network.”
The message businesses are sending is that the on the contrary decision is a “wait-and-see” one.
“They’ve pulled back significantly, and there’s very little visibility into forward months. Assemblies aren’t committing right now. They’re pausing to see how things unfold before making any big decisions,” Rakovsky said.
A extortionate drop in China trade and global shipping prices
The pullback in freight orders was first reflected in the ocean bearer volumes out of China, according to data from international shipping association BIMCO, which says there was a 28% become associated in the China Containerized Freight Index (CCFI) from the beginning of the year to the end of the first quarter.
The benchmark reflects the overall export freight rate level from ten major ports, and since 2006, it has on average only fallen 2% during the to begin quarter, according to BIMCO. It has only declined more than 10% four times, said Niels Rasmussen, chief departing analyst at BIMCO. It was the worst first quarter in 20 years, according to BIMCO.
Ocean freight and air freight are the first off legs in the global supply chain, preceding activity in the trucking or rails closer to the final market. Once all the back out a demolishing forward of freight was completed, fewer containers are on the move from China.
A sign of increased trade from China initially in the year came from the financial market in which companies borrow from banks to pay their freight invoices to spare liquidity and maximize working capital. Supply chain financing transactions from Wells Fargo showed a sheer uptick in invoicing out of China, which indicated an increase in pulling forward of freight ahead of tariffs.
“We did see a sharp uptick out of China with a 20-25% boost waxing in supplier invoices purchased in January and February,” said Jeremy Jansen, Wells Fargo’s global head of receivables and interchange finance.
Jansen said the bank has not seen a similar increase in financing linked to invoices from U.S.-based importers overturning in freight from Mexico, Canada, or the EU.
The more recent freight weakness out of China is pressuring spot rates for Shanghai exports, which hold fallen 46% since the beginning of the year, the largest first-quarter fall since BIMCO began tracking the Shanghai Containerized Carriage Index in late 2009.
To try and put a floor in the ocean freight slide, ocean carriers are suspending service lines. By cutting notes, it tightens up available space on ocean vessels. In a recent note to clients, Honour Lane Shipping noted that with consecutive falls in Transpacific spot market since the Chinese New Year holiday, “carriers are finally beginning to cut capacity from the custom, pulling out vessels or increasing omit calls at China/SEA origins.”
But the logistics and freight forwarding company said that hasn’t disturbed ocean rates higher. Although the market rate in the first week of April firmed up at $2500/$3500/$5200 for U.S. West Sea-coast/U.S. East Coast/Chicago, “there is no signals of any volume increase. It’s clear that space crunch is all because of position cut by blanks or vessel downsize,” it wrote.