The ups and downs in cargo flows following the on and off again imposition of tariffs was quite evident in the monthly media briefing hosted by the Port of Los Angeles (POLA). The month of May, 2025 was clearly an “off” month at the port.
In the hour-long event, streamed over a Zoom platform, POLA’s Executive Director Gene Seroka elaborated on statistics for May, citing overall throughput of 717,000 containers, down 5% from the corresponding figure for a year earlier, and “just a little better than we expected.” May 2025 marked the lowest monthly volume in the last two years, he said.
Diving more deeply into the data, he said that the import component was actually 9% less than the May, 2024 figure, and down a dramatic 19% from the month of April, 2025, and down 25% from levels that POLA had been forecasting prior to the announcement of the tariffs. He said that May is usually stronger than April, as we are approaching peak season.” He cited “Back to school” (end August/ early September), Halloween (end October) and the Christmas Holidays, in December, as the big drivers for inbound cargo shipments and inventory builds.
At multiple times during the broadcast, Seroka stressed the uncertainties surrounding the movements of cargo, expressing a belief the with less cargo being shipped due to tariffs (notably on Chinese goods), the prices for the consumer goods will likely rise.
Webinar participant Ernie Tedeschi, Director of Economics at The Budget Lab policy research center at Yale University, buttressed that view, saying that tariffs might cause inflation to rise 1.5% over the next few years, compared to likely price increases if the tariffs were not put in place. Seroka, referring to POLA’s “Port Optimizer” data platform, said that container throughput during the first part of June was “…pretty average for where we should be in the month of June leaning in towards peak season.”
He also tied the present situation to an observation made in last month’s briefing, where he suggested that “importers would go back in, and scoop up product that had already been manufactured” as tariff levels were eased– following a pause in cargo shipments in the wake of initial tariff announcements.
This pause was reflected in the extremely weak May 2025 import levels referred to at the start of the webinar. Seroka also pointed to simple logistics, saying that several weeks had been required for carriers to reposition vessels to load at Chinese ports. “One month later, we start to see that cargo picking up a little bit- to more normal levels,” he said- referring to the current uptick.
The briefing occurred less than a day after the commencement of hostilities between Israel and Iran, against the backdrop of a sharp rise in oil prices hours earlier. In response to one media question on the impacts of this new conflagration on shipping, Seroka pointed to longer shipping routes and increased costs of bunkers for vessels. Both of these factors would increase the cost of moving cargo.
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