CMA CGM announced a 20 Billion USD investment in US maritime transportation and logistics.
They plan to expand the US-flag fleet of APL from the current 10 vessels to 30 vessels. There is no mentioning of vessel sizes. Their current US-flag vessels range from 1700 TEU to 5500 TEU. This can in practice only be done rapidly by re-flagging vessels built in other countries. (or acquiring such from for example Matson or Crowley) This is clearly a new development.
They will develop port infrastructure in key locations across the U.S., including New York, Los Angeles, Dutch Harbor, Houston, and Miami.
They also plan to develop more warehousing and airfreight capacity.
Developing/expanding/improving port and logistics infrastructure is not really a new development but something which is a continuing process globally for all logistics companies, but does of course add to the US investment. However, the genuine news related to this is of course the addition of another 20 US-flag vessels.
Global container volume measured in TEU grew 5.8% year-on-year in January 2025 according to Container Trade Statistics (CTS). If I measure in TEU*Miles the growth was 7.5%.
However, due to the changing nature of the date of Chinese New Year (CNY) it is difficult to gauge the exact degree to which this is a strong growth. In 2025 CNY was on 29 Jan. whereas it was on 10 Feb. in 2024. It means that the last couple of days in Jan’25 were in the slump, but in 2024 quite a bit of the month was before the ramp-up towards Chinese New Year.
I know many want to get a quantitative feel for the true magnitude of front-loading of cargo into the US, but this is hard to pinpoint with any accuracy due to this changing nature of CNY. Perhaps one – surprising – indicator from CTS is that Far East-N.America grew “only” 8% versus Far East-Europe which grew 20%. But here the turmoil related to the Red Sea might also skew Jan'24 data.
WCI spot rates from Drewry showed a marginal increase to N.Europe and flatlining into Med, wheras Pacific rates continued downwards by approx. 300 USD/FFE to both EC and WC.
It is curious to note that in January where loaded volume into Europe increased 20% year-on-year, we saw the WCI spot rates drop 32% to N.Eur and 19% to Med.
US tariff rules changed again with roughly 50% of Mexican imports and 38% of Canadian imports now having tariffs postponed (again) to April 2nd. The postponement is for goods covered under the USMCA agreement. Also a lower 10% tariff on energy products from Canada as well as potash from both Mexico and Canada.