Cover Story 2026 Annual Review & Outlook
strong nexus between international intermodal and Asian imports to West Coast ports. Domestic intermodal demand is often tied to how easy it is to procure trucks and how much cost is a factor in procurement decisions. If tariffs, for example, are squeezing overall margins, then a shipper might convert less service-sensitive freight to intermodal to meet their budget targets.
Lurching into 2026
Zero import growth is rare in US ocean shipping. There have been just two periods in which containerized import volumes have declined to the extent seen in recent months, said analyst John McCown. The most recent was in the spring of 2020, when retailers and other importers slashed orders on fears that retail consumption would plunge in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic; the first was in 2008 – 09 in the wake of the financial crisis, he said.
“ I think we’ re looking at perhaps the worst performance year that I can recall, in 2026, in terms of volume growth,” McCown said.
S & P Global Ratings on Dec. 10 forecast that US container volumes will be down 2 % in 2026 from 2025, while Moody’ s Rating’ s on Nov. 20 predicted flat to negative import volume growth. The S & P Global outlook calls for a rebound in volume of 6 % in 2027 on the hopes of a more stable trade policy.
For all of 2025, imports are estimated to be down 1.4 % from 2024 at 25.2 million TEUs, according to the National Retail Federation( NRF).
US retailers are signaling they will be keeping volumes at a significant year-over-year deficit at least through April. Volumes in January, February, March and April are expected to be, respectively, 10.3 %, 8.5 %, 16.8 %, and 11 % lower than the corresponding months in 2025, according to the Global Port Tracker, which is produced by Hackett Associates on behalf of the NRF.
Port operators, too, are budgeting for declines or only slow growth in 2026. The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey said in November it’ s budgeting for total container volumes of 8.5 million TEUs in 2026, which would be just over a 2 % decline from 2024. Since 2016, New York-New Jersey port container volumes have grown at an annual average of 4.2 %.
“ We’ re looking at perhaps the worst performance that I can recall in terms of volume growth.”
Remarkably, US containerized exports have been resilient. Volumes in the first nine months of 2025 were up 2.1 % from a year ago, with containerized agricultural exports 1.2 % higher in the same period, according to the latest available data from PIERS, a sister product of the Journal of Commerce within S & P Global. In a twist of trade, US export growth is outpacing gains in imports, or lack thereof.
Journal of Commerce editorial staff contributed to this report.
email: bill. cassidy @ spglobal. com
10 Journal of Commerce | January 5, 2026 www. joc. com