July 2025 TEU report: LA and Long Beach hit record volumes while Oakland and Vancouver surge. Explore U.S., Canada & Mexico port trends.

USWC ports see steep drop in China trade—imports down over 25% and exports off more than 65% since pre-COVID levels.

California truckers face record diesel prices, paying 35% more than Houston and far above East Coast and Gulf Coast averages. Diesel for drayage in California tops $5/gal, driving up trucking costs at LA, Long Beach, and Oakland ports.

June 2025 TEU data reveals key shifts in U.S., Canadian & Mexican port volumes, West Coast shares, and global container trade trends.

The story behind 53-foot containers on U.S. highways—how the 1982 STAA law and Rep. Glenn Anderson changed trucking forever.

West Coast ports see volatile market share in U.S. container trade as tariffs, labor risks, and East Asia imports drive shifting cargo flows.

Normally, the Port of Los Angeles is the nation’s busiest container gateway. Still, from time to time, the Port of New York/New Jersey (PNYNJ) lays claim to the title, invariably causing the East Coast media to break out the celebratory sparklers. The contest for the nation’s top container port is typically framed in the media as a rivalry between PNYNJ and the Port of LA, the Yankees vs. the Dodgers, if you will.

On July 9, the National Retail Federation’s Global Port Tracker projected that 2.06 million TEUs laden with goods from abroad would arrive in June at the thirteen U.S. mainland ports it surveys.

Explore whether the U.S. West Coast’s share of container trade is declining, examining recent trends, stats, and implications for port competition.

Through the first five months of 2025, containerized export tonnage from U.S. West Coast ports to China and Hong Kong plunged by 42.1% from the same period a year earlier and by 61.4% from the same months in 2019.

Once upon a time, Japan was the primary overseas trading partner of the ports that now operate as the Northwest Seaport Alliance. Indeed, Japan was the leading U.S. trading partner for containerized cargo, according to a 1980 report from the U.S. Maritime Administration.

Exhibits 1-3 display the May TEU counts for the North American ports PMSA monitors. (Note that May figures for the Port of Baltimore were unavailable by our publication deadline.)  At the remaining U.S. ports, the year’s fifth month saw the number of inbound loaded TEUs decline by 6.4% from a year earlier to 2,018,951 TEUs as confusion over tariffs prompted importers to slow the build-up of inventory.

Discover the latest preliminary container volumes for May 2025, revealing emerging shifts in port trade dynamics. This update highlights trends across major West Coast, East Coast, Gulf, and Canadian ports, offering a snapshot of loaded and empty TEU activity.