The Port of Long Beach reported its second-busiest August sixth-busiest month in its 114-year history as retailers rushed to take advantage of a break in U.S. tariffs on China.
Long Beach, part of the San Pedro harbor complex with the Port of Los Angeles, processed 901,846 twenty foot equivalent units (TEUs) in August, the port said in a release, off 1.3% from the monthly record set in 2024.
Imports fell 3.6% to 440,318 TEUs while exports decreased 8.3% to 95,960 TEUs. Empty containers, an indicator of future import activity, rose 3.7% to 365,567 TEUs.
“Shifting trade policies continue to create uncertainty for businesses and consumers,” said Port of Long Beach Chief Executive Mario Cordero, in the release. “Our Supply Chain Information Highway digital tracker is projecting our peak shipping season to be on pace with last year as retailers start to stock their warehouses in preparation for the winter holidays.”
The initial 90-day tariff pause by President Donald Trump expired in early August. A new, identical pause with 30% baseline tariffs now runs into November as Beijing and Washington work on the details of a trade agreement.
Privately, one shipping executive told FreightWaves that the tariff pause provided a breather of sorts for U.S. Customs and Border Protection, whose information technology systems were overwhelmed by the sheer volume of changes coming out of Washington.
But a distributor of industrial testing equipment which sources some of its products from China and Malaysia told FreightWaves that it had seen customer demand start to pick up in June, get stronger in July, and likely will reach a record in August. The distributor said that price increases due to tariffs only ran about 3%, and that its customers were feeling more settled about their business plans in the coming months.
Long Beach handled 6,592,708 TEUs through the first eight months of 2025, a gain of 8.3% y/y.
Find more articles by Stuart Chirls here.
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