Peak Season Forecast

Special Report

Weak consumer confidence, rising inflation dim peak season hopes

By Bill Mongelluzzo and Kevin Saville

Carriers boosting trans-Pacific capacity through July

Asia – US container ship capacity, deployed and blanked, with planned

TEUs

2.5M

2M

1.5M-500k

1M

500k

0

The traditional peak shipping season in the US may effectively pass unnoticed this year, a major retail group suggested in early May, citing inflation, weak consumer confidence and retailers hesitant to launch any meaningful restocking given a hazy economic outlook. The war with Iran, now in its third month, is the prime mover behind the economic uncertainty, the National Retail Federation( NRF) and Hackett Associates indicated in their latest Global Port Tracker( GPT) report.

According to the NRF, US imports in May and June will actually be moderately higher than the year-ago figures, but noted that growth is largely artificial because it’ s being

-947.9k-500k

L Jun, 2023 Jan 2025 Jul Jan 2026 Jul

Source: eeSea

Actual capacity Planned capacity Blanked capacity

© 2026 S & P Glob

compared with May and June 2025, when imports fell sharply following the Trump administration’ s implementation of widespread tariffs that April.

The true import picture will come into focus in the heart of summer, with the NRF’ s July forecast of 2.2 million TEUs down almost 8 % year over year. And things will weaken progressively from there, despite August being the

14 Journal of Commerce | June 1, 2026 www. joc. com