The National Retail Federation (NRF) is expecting an import surge in the wake of the 2024 presidential election, which saw Donald Trump voted back into the role as commander-in-chief.
While any details about President-elect Trump’s tariff policies are far from set in stone, his anticipated baseline tariff of 10 to 20 percent on all imports is already spooking retailers into bringing goods into the U.S. ahead of his January inauguration, the trade association says.
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In a statement, Jonathan Gold, NRF’s vice president for supply chain and customs policy, said the group is hearing from some merchants that they will move up their shipments to avoid the expected tariff hikes.
On Monday, the NRF released its own study which calculated that tariff increases proposed by Trump could drive up consumer prices by anywhere between $46 billion and $78 billion a year.
Gold noted that the potential tariff implementation isn’t the only catalyst expected to persuade retailers to pull forward their imports. With the Oct. 1 East and Gulf Coast port strike already pushing the industry to bring in goods earlier than normal, the NRF expects concerns of a second strike on Jan. 15 to push retailers to repeat that behavior through the end of 2024.
“That [strike concern] has retailers spending extra to bring in cargo early or continue shifting it to the West Coast to avoid any potential disruptions, much like they did earlier this year,” Gold said.
Both the International Longshoremen’s Association dockworkers union and their employers, the U.S. Maritime Alliance, are set to resume formal negotiations next week now that the election is over.
But the association remains nervous given the uncertainty at play.
“Neither of these developments are good for retailers, their customers or the economy,” Gold said.
The monthly Global Port Tracker, which is produced for the NRF by maritime trade consultancy Hackett Associates, has not revised its projections for the end of the year to reflect the election results. But it has taken the potential port strike into consideration.
The pull-forward of goods ahead of the port strike clearly influenced September’s inbound cargo volumes. U.S. ports covered by the Global Port Tracker handled 2.29 million 20-foot equivalent units (TEUs) during the month—down 1.3 percent from August but up 12.8 percent year over year.