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.
Ports of New York & New Jersey and Miami have yet to report final data for the month, so their totals are excluded.
Ports have not yet reported October’s numbers, but the Global Port Tracker projected the month at 2.13 million TEUs, up 3.7 percent year over year. November is forecast at 2.15 million TEUs, increasing 13.6 percent from the year prior, and December at 1.99 million TEUs, up 6.1 percent.
With those projections, inbound cargo volume for 2024 would amount to 25.3 million TEUs, up 13.6 percent from 2023. That total would still be 1.9 percent down from the record 25.8 million TEUs that came into U.S. ports in 2021.
October was previously forecast at 2.12 million TEU, November at 1.91 million TEU and December at 1.88 million TEU, and the total for 2024 was previously forecast at 24.9 million TEUs.
To kick off 2025, with another port strike potentially back into play, January is expected to haul in 2.01 million TEUs, up 2.5 percent year over year. February is anticipated to see a 9.3 percent decline to 1.77 million TEUs due to fluctuations in the timing of Lunar New Year shutdowns at Asian factories. Year-over-year import totals should swing back to the positive in March, with a projected 4.4 percent increase to 2.01 million TEUs.
Hackett Associates founder Ben Hackett said the potential for a January port strike “can be seen in the continuing increases in U.S. imports from Asia, which have not fallen away as expected.”
And worries over higher tariffs are a global concern, he said.
“We are witnessing elections around the world where discontent is leading to inward-looking policies that threaten trade with the almost certain potential for increasing tariffs,” Hackett said. “In the United States, this is particularly true with the election of Donald Trump but it is not much different in Europe, with the E.U. calling for tariffs to be applied to a growing number of products from China.”
