The point of this post is not to say there won't be impacts. I think the impacts will be significant, but I think concerns about shortages are premature.
[This article about blank sailings from China](https://www.cnbc.com/2025/04/16/trade-war-fallout-china-freight-ship-decline-begins-orders-plummet.html) got a lot of attention, but I think a lot of the items that should have been on those ships have already been shipped. Importers knew as soon as Trump was elected that tariffs were coming and they planned ahead.
[Import volume into the Port of LA was up 5% YoY in Q1](https://www.portoflosangeles.org/references/2025-news-releases/news_041125_march_cargo) and saw [a huge spike](https://kentico.portoflosangeles.org/getmedia/6187bcbe-b2ce-41bb-a28e-f5d99372f49e/import-container-dwell-report) at the beginning of April as the tariffs became imminent.
Import volume into the Port of Long Beach [was up 25% YoY in Q1](https://polb.com/business/port-statistics/#latest-statistics).
Planned import volume into LA this week is [50% higher than last year](https://signal.portoptimizer.com/).
That last dashboard shows that even next week is scheduled to be net positive year-over-year, and the big drop is coming in two weeks, when they expect about 48,000 fewer TEU than last year. I think whatever would have been in those containers is already here. The big question is what happens after that. If you want to track it in real time, you can keep watching that dashboard.
