NRF Cut Its July Import Forecast From Record to Decline

The National Retail Federation and Hackett Associates now project July container imports at 2.21 million TEU, down 7.6% year over year. Their previous Global Port Tracker had July hitting an all-time record.

June moved too, though less dramatically. Actual volume came in at 2.23 million TEU, up 13.2% on a weak 2025 comparison — against an earlier projection of nearly 19% growth.

Global Port Tracker is the most widely cited forward view of US container demand, and shippers, carriers and forwarders all plan against it. A revision from record to decline inside two monthly cycles is worth understanding on its own terms.

What moved

The front-loading that was supposed to produce a July record happened earlier than expected and then didn't stop when expected either.

Retailers pulled orders forward ahead of the expiry of the temporary 10% Section 122 global tariffs on July 23. A fresh round of Section 301 duties — 10% to 12.5%, covering 60 economies and affecting 99% of US imports — took effect the next day. NRF's Jonathan Gold described the year as an early peak season driven by tariff timing and by disruption from the conflict in Iran.

The consequence is that May, not July, turned out to be the year's busiest month at 2.24 million TEU. The peak arrived roughly two months ahead of its historical position and flattened out rather than spiking.

This is not new behaviour so much as an acceleration of it. A Deloitte survey last year found retailers had placed more than half of holiday orders by the end of May — about two months earlier than the same survey found in 2024.

The shape of the rest of the year

The revised forecast runs down through the autumn and then flattens.

August is projected at 2.22 million TEU, down 4.2% year over year. September turns positive at 2.16 million TEU, up 2.8%. October follows at 2.13 million and up 2.7%, November at 2.03 million and up 0.3%, December at 2.06 million and up 2.5%.

Read down that column and the pattern is a market that stops falling but never really climbs. Every month from September carries a positive year-over-year number, and every one of them is smaller in absolute TEU than the month before it. Full-year 2026 lands at 25.5 million TEU, up 0.1% on 2025 — which itself was down 0.3% on 2024. Three years, no growth.

Ben Hackett, whose firm produces the tracker, noted that consumers might have been expected to pull back under cost-of-living pressure and haven't. Spending has stayed resilient through the geopolitical uncertainty.

What it means for forwarders

Treat the forecast as a range, not a number. This is the practical lesson. The July estimate moved from record to a 7.6% decline in roughly six weeks, and June's growth projection came down by close to six points against actual. Global Port Tracker remains the best public read available on US import demand — but a planning assumption built on a single point estimate from it is a planning assumption with more variance in it than the headline implies. Where a decision is expensive to reverse, stress-test it against a number several points either side.

Well-stocked customers are quiet customers. Gold's assessment is that retailers will be well stocked for the holidays. Inventory already landed is inventory that will not be booked in Q4. If your volume forecast for the back half assumes a conventional holiday build, the cargo that would have supplied it moved in May.

Watch the gap between volume and rates. Imports are forecast down year over year in both July and August while transpacific spot rates set new highs. Falling volume alongside rising prices is a supply-side condition, and it is not stable. Whichever way it resolves — carriers adding capacity into a soft market, or discipline holding through the autumn — that is what determines Q4 pricing far more than the TEU forecast does.

The tariff calendar is now the demand calendar. Two rounds of duties inside two days reshaped a whole peak season. For anyone building a 2027 forecast, the effective dates on the trade-policy calendar have become a better leading indicator of when cargo moves than the seasonal pattern has.