Trade Currents Navigator: What’s in the Box?

The February 2024 edition of Trade Currents Navigator, a report focusing on trade analysis and monthly forecasts, highlights top containerized commodities affecting ports’ trade volumes. The report addresses containerized trade trends and forecasts through the first quarter of 2025, including:

• The top import and export containerized commodities affecting total containerized trade
• Macroeconomic factors that affect volumes of traded commodities
• Uncertainties that may impact commodities’ containerized trade
• Changes in country origin or destination shares
• Seasonality of containerized commodity trade

In monitoring U.S. container trade, attention is often narrowly focused on the total number of containers (in TEUs) that are handled by ports and inland transportation providers. The number of TEUs is a valuable aggregate measure that can be compared across all U.S. ports, as well as over time, and is the key driver of revenue at container terminals and ports. As such, total TEUs is an important indicator of port performance, an input to short-term operational planning, and a factor in longer-term capacity development and capital investment in ports and inland infrastructure.

Tracking containerized commodities can be very helpful to port operations. These trends translate to different equipment needs. Differences in container types and sizes are critically important to shippers and transportation providers to support specific supply chains and in balancing the flow of containers to meet market needs. An important example is providing U.S. exporters with containers where they are needed, e.g. in agricultural production regions. At the most basic level, how to recycle empty containers back to overseas locations to maintain the global flow of goods is an important logistics issue.

Monitoring and Analyzing the Flows of Containerized Commodities

Revealing the dynamics of total container trade requires an examination of multiple dimensions:

• Commodity Detail – Trade of different commodities is driven by vastly different drivers of volumes. For imports, these range from U.S. spending on specific consumer goods to building construction. Export volumes depend on factors ranging from U.S. agricultural production to global demand for plastic pellets.

• Modal Shifts and Containerization Rates – Container trade volumes for imports and exports depend heavily on the modes used to transport those goods, and those modes can vary significantly over time. Modal shifts can occur between vessel and air, and also from shifts between overseas trading partners and cross-border trade by land with Canada and Mexico. Containerization rates for commodities transported by vessel can also vary significantly over time.

• Country Trading Partners – Shifts in trade between the U.S. and overseas trading partners can also change significantly over time. A shift in U.S. imports away from China to other suppliers in recent years is an important example. Shifts may also occur due to regional constraints such as drought conditions that are limiting shipping volumes through the Panama Canal. In addition, Red Sea/Suez Canal shipping disruptions are likely to raise costs for goods traded between the U.S. and the Middle East and South Asian countries, and this could shift trading patterns for some commodities.

• Seasonality – Many traded commodities have distinct seasonal patterns. A prime example is imports of consumer goods that peak in late summer in advance of holiday season spending. Another example is agricultural imports or exports that peak during harvest seasons. While many seasonal patterns may be relatively stable over time, they may be affected by short-term supply or demand disturbances.

Trade Currents is a partner with AAPA in support of its Port Statistics Program to benefit ports, as well as the broader trade and logistics industry, research community, policymakers, and private institutions. Trade Currents partners include internationally recognized economists and trade analysts Dr. Walter Kemmsies, Andrei Roudoi and Scudder Smith. For questions about this article or AAPA’s work with Trade Currents, contact Shannon McLeod, AAPA Vice President of Member Services.