'We Currently Have No Container Ships,' Seattle Port Says
77 comments
·May 10, 2025neuroelectron
m3047
A chunk of the Post Alley article is spent on the observation that a single stevedoring company controls operations at all terminals in Seattle, but not in Tacoma; yet they're both part of the same port alliance.
BJones12
As is tradition, I'll plug the latest episode of What's Going On With Shipping:
https://youtu.be/QCyB-Ym0ryk?t=947
(the timestamp links to the "May 2025 Estimate" chapter)
cableshaft
Youtube just suggested that to me recently and it's quite an interesting channel with lots of charts and data if you're curious about this stuff.
mmazing
Yeah, it is a far better source of information than literally anywhere else I have seen for getting commentary on the tariff's actual impact on trade.
null
banku_brougham
Huge amount of discussion in this thread neglects the idea that a massive increase in tariffs will throttle trade shipments. Its the obvious expected effect.
roxolotl
Again further stating the obvious here but this is the _desired_ effect. Not saying if that’s good one way or the other but it’s clear the goal is to reduce inbound volume from the world.
fallingknife
That's obvious. I think the question is more one of how long will they be throttled for? Even if there was a domestic or foreign nontariffed supplier for 100% of the goods in question it would still take significant lead time for the new orders to be filled and even more for cases where capacity needs to be increased.
theturtletalks
No one knows, it’s a game of chicken. Will the suppliers eat the tariff cost if they start losing market share? Will consumers just pay the extra cost if they really need the item?
If the latter happens, will a domestic company come in and undercut the international sellers?
pan69
If the suppliers decide that it's not worth the risk of letting the consumer to decide to pay the passed on tariff then there simply is no consumer choice.
There needs to exist a domestic supplier to be able to fill the gap. My guess is that for many products, there simply isn't one.
ljf
Looks like this needs updating now https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/chinese-cargo-seattle-tari...
kristjansson
> In fact, the Northwest Seaport Alliance … said it was so far seeing more vessels call into port in 2025 than in 2024, with three more calls in the first quarter of 2025 than during the same period in 2024.
> However, the ships calling into port were arriving with unpredictable volumes of cargo — sometimes 30% less than anticipated
And Snopes felt comfortable rating “mostly false” to the top level claim? I get that they’re trying to navigating treacherous waters, but “there’s still ships, they’re just 1/3 empty” is as much support for the top level claim as it is contradiction
mtillman
Perfect use of treacherous waters. Kudos.
anigbrowl
Not the first time their headline has been at odds with their content. I've never really been a fan of this particular outlet, even in their early days I found their self-absorbed writing style insufferable. They strike me as pedantic rather than informative.
lowbloodsugar
Snopes has been pwnd. It now adheres to the standard of literal truth with a political bias. So if someone posts “Bernie Sanders has 30,000 at a rally” (true) but the image is of a different (also true) rally but on a different date, then Snopes just says “it’s false”. Not “true, but the image is wrong”. Not informative, like “Bernie did have 30,000 people attend but this image is from XYZ”. Just says FALSE! Same here.
mikem170
They've always seemed informative and do a good job of showing their sources. How big a deal is the single-word true/false judgement for an ambiguous claim if all the relevant details are summarized?
echoangle
Not really, the claim was „the port is empty“, not „the ships arriving are empty“. If there are still ships arriving, the claim is false.
kristjansson
Most of what comprises a port is infrastructure for handling containers and bulk cargo. If cargo volumes are down, some fraction of that infrastructure is disused, or used below its capacity. That a ship was at berth is cold comfort to the longshoremen, truck drivers, etc. who expected to work that cargo, nevermind to the people that expected to, y’know, purchase and consume those goods.
Is 30% underutilized / partially disused tantamount to empty? Maybe not. But it’s in the ballpark in a way the snopes rating undersells.
watwut
The claim was "at this moment right now, the port is empty". The article then talks about 35% drop of "shipments" and "imports".
lurk2
If I drink 30% of a glass of water, is the glass of water empty?
Retric
These aren’t static systems.
Keep removing 1 cup of water and add 2/3 cups and eventually it goes to zero. For a port that very well may be sending people home early on an ‘empty’ port. Even if tomorrow brings in new ships for now it looks like a ghost town.
And then at one port on one day zero cargo ships showed up.
gamblor956
No, but if the claim is that the glass no longer has any boba it's irrelevant how much liquid you drink.
The specific claim was that the port no longer had any container ships on that specific day. And that claim was true.
Yes, there were other ships in the port. But that's irrelevant. A container ship is a specific kind of cargo ship used for international cargo shipments. In an article about international shipments, that distinctions matters.
ok_dad
If I drink 30% less water overall, I’d be pretty unhealthy.
plopz
its closer to empty than before you drank
danesparza
The slopes article was about a claim in April.
This article was written in May, and directly quotes Seattle port commissioner Ryan Calkins.
TheBozzCL
Absolutely off-topic, but I started browsing Snopes’ tracking consent options and they use an insane amount of vendors. It took me longer to scroll through the list than reading the article itself.
BJones12
No, the original claim was "as of April 29, 2025", which was false and will always be false.
Perhaps they should make another page for the newest claims. But again, the situation is very different than this article's headline.
tokai
Seems like they are debunking that port is empty, while the article of this thread states that there are no container ships. Lots of cargo isn't moved by container ships.
lvl155
Think you want to look at Vancouver traffic as well. I believe some companies are shipping it there and waiting it out. This admin will fold faster than a cheap $2…
AlotOfReading
I wonder how long that can last. Quite a bit of Vancouver traffic diverts to Seattle and Tacoma to avoid capacity issues, and there's finite warehouse capacity to hold containers that haven't gone through customs.
hmm37
Isn't Trump also placing extra charges on Chinese made ships docking at US ports? If they ship to Vancouver, and trains ship the shipping containers to the US, can you avoid this extra fee which is quite expensive at a $1M or so per Chinese made container ship?
ccorcos
Can we talk about how many tiny/hidden x’s I had to find to read this article?!
perihelions
Related thread,
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43844708 ("Port of Los Angeles says shipping volume will plummet 35% next week (cnbc.com)" — 657 comments)
ncr100
I'm worried that Trump will use this impending crisis to enact some distracting and worse event for the United States.
Historically he does this, use outrageous distractions to diffuse negative attention from his perceived failures.
electrondood
And then the courts are like "no, you don't get to do that."
What kind of master negotiator creates a deadline that only applies to himself?
9283409232
Trump has been ignoring the courts. Why would he stop now?
daemin
Trump can afford to do that because the highest court in the land said anything he does as President in official duties he cannot be tried for.
So now he doesn't care what any court says.
mmazing
He found the loophole that courts hate!
mattskr
I've been watching What's Going on With Shipping (https://www.youtube.com/@wgowshipping). He's a professor and a former merchant mariner. More importantly, he's super sober about the facts of the situation and frankly has a better overall understanding of logistics than a random journalist. I'm tired of the sensationalism of every damn thing, and at least this guy's channel gives a more realistic perspective.
Highly recommend watching his stuff if "shipping" is your new sudden "expertise" because it's the hot new thing the media cycle wants you to focus on.
danesparza
I've been watching that channel, too. Good stuff.
But calling this "a random journalist" when the article directly quotes Seattle port commissioner Ryan Calkins is minimizing the truth.
From the article:
"I can see it right over my shoulder here, I'm looking out at the Port of Seattle right now, and we currently have no container ships at berth," Seattle port commissioner Ryan Calkins told CNN on Wednesday.
"That happens every once in a while at normal times, but it's pretty rare," he added. "And so to see it tonight is I think a stark reminder that the impacts of the tariffs have real implications."
firesteelrain
"That happens every once in a while..."
Are we looking at this moment as one of those times? It sounds like he is unsure if it is truly tariff impacts or not if he has seen it before.
habinero
I think it's pretty self-apparent? He's saying it occasionally happens but it's rare and the fact that it's happening now is a concerning data point.
It's like climate change: sure, historically you naturally get years with lots of hurricanes or really strong ones.
But if you get, on average, more and more hurricanes and the hurricanes themselves are stronger? That's a trend.
refulgentis
Idk the whole discussion is hard for me to parse.
- Any one-off data point could be just random decrease or tariff impacts and we do not have a forward-looking time machine to accumulate more data
- It doesn't really shed any light at all if volumes are less or more: both outcomes can be spun as a success (if they're less, great, American Juche continues unimpeded, if they're more, great, then we just debate if the manufacturers ("China") are "paying for" the tariffs by decreasing list prices to the importer enough that the importer can maintain the same price for customers) ("China" cannot literally pay for the tariffs, they are paid for by the US company or individual accepting the shipment from the dock)
It's sort of like if it was February 2020, Wuhan was overrun and Italy was exploding, and people spent a lot of time in the nuances of if the US double digit case was up more this week than it was last week or two weeks ago
watwut
So, the headline is direct quote from what port director says. He The article content talks about 35 percent drop.
People in this discussion here argue that article was written by bad lying journalist, because other sources say there is 35 percent drop in shipment and ports rarely have empty port.
Like, ok.
shepherdjerred
> "That happens every once in a while at normal times, but it's pretty rare,"
snozolli
I find it odd that recent articles are always about the Port of Seattle. From a quick Google search, it looks like the busiest US ports are Los Angeles, Long Beach, Port of New York, Port of Savannah, then Port of Seattle. As of 2018, the Port of Los Angeles alone was almost 3x busier than the Port of Seattle.
Not that it isn't worth noting, but I'm much more interested in overall volume across all of the nation's ports, and especially the West Coast ports.
kristjansson
LA is down 32% YoY this week[0].
But also LA and Long Beach are effectively a single port, so per your enumeration … Seattle is the second biggest port on the west coast? Seems like that’d be one to look at when we’re talking about transpacific trade?
[0]: https://volumes.portoptimizer.com/ . NB The predictions for subsequent weeks are based on historical data AFAICT, and haven’t been accurate. The actual are good data though.
snozolli
But also LA and Long Beach are effectively a single port, so per your enumeration … Seattle is the second biggest port on the west coast?
Long Beach has almost the traffic as Los Angeles, so by your logic Seattle is only 1/6 the volume.
Seems like that’d be one to look at when we’re talking about transpacific trade?
Which one? I would be looking at LA and LB.
kristjansson
I didn’t say it was a close second.
Again, LA/LB are basically the same port. One would also want to look at the next biggest geographically distinct port, which on the west coast is Seattle
bobthepanda
IIRC there was some speculation that a dip in container volumes would lead to less calls at smaller ports since there would be more room available at larger ports, and reducing port calls both reduces fees and travel times.
huhkerrf
Not that it invalidates your point, but you're missing a lot of ports. Houston, South Louisiana, Mobile, Beaumont, etc. Seattle is actually 17th by foreign import tonnage.
guywithahat
I was thinking that too; I’m guessing the Seattle port was posted just because Seattle is a tech hub and people recognize the city.
I’m sure imports will be down though, as that’s the point of the tariffs
marcosdumay
I have been looking for an explanation to the US empty ports news. The best one I came with is that ships have been switching their destination ports to some that they could reach before the tariffs or some that have available tariff-free storage where the cargo can stay until Trump backpedals.
The total cargo volume seems to be falling only now, what still may be just noise.
Cerium
My understanding is that ship tarrifs are calculated at the time of departure, not arrival. This supports the delayed volume reduction since we see the change 22 to 40 days delayed (Pacific transit time).
roxolotl
These in particular are calculated based on time of departure. I don’t believe that’s the common case though.
gamblor956
The simple explanation is that many (but not all) exporters simply stopped exporting things in April (as those shipments would have arrived in May, after the tariffs took effect). And many of the factories overseas have cut back on production, especially of low-value goods most affected by tariffs. Smaller ports like Seattle generally handle the overflow from the bigger ports, so they're the first to be affected by the reduction in cargo traffic.
Even if tariffs are reduced/eliminated, there will still be a lag of 3-6 weeks before destination-port cargo traffic picks up again, assuming that there is product overseas ready to be shipped.
foobarian
Right, be interesting to see if the departure volume also dropped or how long it lags behind arrivals.
joezydeco
Friend of mine is in the commercial real estate business, leases lots of warehouses to big names. He says he's seeing a LOT of uptake on the east coast: Savannah, Jacksonville FL, Charleston.
A lot of companies are shifting to production in India, Pakistan, Vietnam, and it's easier to ship through Suez to the east coast from there.
firesteelrain
This shows port traffic increasing by 56% when compared to the prior year for the time period of May 18-24 based on the number of scheduled vessels and twenty foot equivalent unit (TEU). What's really going on if tariffs were having a major detrimental impact?
9283409232
The uptick can be explained by this story[0]. As trade talks begin, exporters want to be ready to begin shipping ASAP. It remains to be seen if this will volume will come through depending on the results of these trade talks and tariffs.
[0] https://gcaptain.com/as-trade-talks-begin-chinese-exporters-...
ljf
https://www.npr.org/2025/05/07/nx-s1-5389955/los-angeles-por...
LA Port is down 35 percent so far.
This article first published 2 days ago. Here's one from April 30: https://www.fox13seattle.com/news/rumors-claim-seattle-ports... April 29: https://www.king5.com/article/news/verify/what-we-can-verify... April 28: https://seemorerocks.substack.com/p/port-of-seattle-empty-ze... April 27: https://mishtalk.com/economics/shipping-collapse-port-worker... April 25: https://www.seattletimes.com/business/tariff-tit-for-tat-has...
Seattle/Tacoma Seaport schedule: https://www.nwseaportalliance.com/cargo-operations/vessel-sc...
This article from Dec, '24 says port volume is expected to be lower than pandemic levels until 2029. A lot of chatter around the issue centers on local politics and leaders: https://www.postalley.org/2024/12/26/seattles-port-faces-a-c...