Trump's tariffs achieve their goal: US international trade begins to decline sharply.

Donald Trump's tariffs are achieving the tycoon's goal that economists find most incomprehensible: sinking US international trade with other countries. And the effects are already being felt in the ports: the number of containers arriving at US ports with imported products has fallen for the second consecutive month, with the indicator closing the second quarter in negative territory for the first time since 2020, according to data from the Bloomberg news agency.

Inbound container volume fell 7.9 percent in June from a year earlier, following a 6.6 percent drop in May , according to a monthly report released Sunday by trade analyst John McCown, which compiles figures from the 10 largest U.S. ports.

The sharp declines in May and June more than offset the nearly 10% increase in April, when companies tried to accelerate their purchases before the tariffs went into effect to build up inventories to draw on in subsequent months. But that effect has now worn off, and the result is that the second quarter closed with a 1.8% year-over-year drop in container shipments.

McCown points out that he only recalls two periods of decline in annual volume: during the 2008 global financial crisis and the pandemic . And, in both cases, they were short-lived drops. "The drop in 2025 will be due to tariffs, and unfortunately, at the moment, there's nothing to suggest it will be short-lived," he laments.

After a 15% increase last year, "a decline in total annual inbound volume is most likely in 2025," the analyst says. "This will be one of the sharpest year-over-year declines in US container volume in the six-decade history of container shipping."

The weakness of maritime trade at U.S. ports is reflected in container rates shipped to the U.S. West Coast from China, which have fallen for five consecutive weeks.

McCown estimates that a 25% reduction in U.S. container volume is "easily possible," which would translate "directly into a $510 billion reduction in annual U.S. trade ." The total value of containerized goods transiting U.S. ports last year was $2.2 trillion, according to McCown's data.