Blank sailings in Transpacific trade have surged in recent weeks amid escalating trade tensions, particularly between the United States and China.

Sea-Intelligence stated in a recent report that for the four-week period from weeks 16 to 19 (including this week and the next three weeks), they have analysed the capacity scheduled at various points over the past six weeks to assess the impact of the tariffs.

"On the Asia-North America West Coast, 1.43 million TEUs were scheduled for deployment for weeks 16-19 in week 10," the Danish shipping consultancy company said.

It noted that this remained consistent at week 11, and only slightly decreased to 1.40 million by week 12.

In week 13, Sea-Inteligence said scheduled deployed capacity for weeks 16-19 dropped by 8% week/week to 1.29 million TEU, further dropping to 1.37 million TEU by week 15.

"Overall, this is -12% lower than what was scheduled six weeks ago," the report further said.

Sea-Intelligence noted that on the Asia-North America East Coast, scheduled capacity for weeks 16-19 declined from 1.01 million TEUS scheduled by week 10 to 867,000 TEUS scheduled by week 15, representing a 14% decline across the 6-week period.

 [Source: Sea-Intelligence]

"Figure 1 shows the blank sailings impact of the current tariffs on the combined Transpacific trade, i.e. combined across Asia-NAWC and Asia-NAEC. Three weeks ago, 'only' 60,000 TEU was scheduled to be blanked for weeks 16-19," the report said.

It added that this increased to 250,000 TEU in the space of a week, as carriers announced a raft of blank sailings in response to the tariffs.

Another significant increase came in week 15, with the total blanked capacity for weeks 16-19 increasing to 367,800 TEU. 

Sea-Intelligence said a similar impact is not seen on the Transatlantic trade, where capacity is largely holding steady, especially now considering a 90-day suspension of tariffs has been announced by both the Trump administration and the EU.

"The current political climate is extremely volatile and given that tariffs are being imposed and suspended on an almost daily basis, we assume that both the shipping lines and cargo owners are only adjusting their short-term supply chains for now and waiting for things to settle down (one way or another), before making longer-term network adjustments," said Alan Murphy, CEO, Sea-Intelligence.