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Maersk now expects a possible decrease in worldwide container volumes for 2025 on the backdrop of U.S.-levied tariffs on global trading partners and a trade war with China.
While the ocean carrier previously anticipated global container volume growth to be 4 percent in 2025, the outlook has been revised to be in a range of 4 percent growth to a 1 percent contraction.
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The container outlook remains closer to that of maritime advisory Drewry, which expects global container volumes to fall 1 percent in 2025 because of the trade policies.
Maersk maintained its full-year profit guidance, which included underlying earnings before interest and taxes (EBIT) between $0 and $3 billion.
The EBIT is based on the potential increased supply-demand imbalance that comes with new ship deliveries, as well as the impact of the Red Sea crisis on capacity. Vincent Clerc, CEO of A.P. Moller-Maersk, said during a first-quarter earnings call he expects the Red Sea issue to last for the full year, despite President Donald Trump’s insistence that the Houthis would cease firing on ships in and near the waterway.
As has been observed by U.S. West Coast ports as import bookings out of China plummeted throughout the month, China-to-U.S. volumes dropped 30 percent to 40 percent in April, according to Clerc. The CEO said Maersk was able to reallocate cargo to other areas where there’s still strong demand.
According to Clerc, shippers will have to get their hands on as much inventory as possible, but it will all depend on how much merchandise companies expect to sell, as well as how much can be domestically sourced from local distributors.
“Let’s be clear. If we don’t [strike more trade deals] before the summer, it’s going to start to hurt quite a lot across the board because there are certain commodities and certain things where you can’t really substitute some of these imports freely in terms also both in terms of SKU, but also in terms of quantities,” Clerc said during the call. “The capacity that there was in China is not available or readily available elsewhere to support the U.S. market.”
Maersk’s observed volume drop is similar to Gemini Cooperation partner Hapag-Lloyd, which said in April that its customers had canceled 30 percent of shipments to the U.S. from China.
Volumes on this trade lane make up 5 percent of Maersk’s total, while the remaining 95 percent comprising the rest of the world operates with “unchanged demand,” Clerc said.