Port of LA, key US point for China imports, has best-ever quarter despite trade uncertainty

The Port of Los Angeles, the largest container port in the United States and the country’s leading gateway for imports from China and other Asian countries, had its busiest three-month period on record from July through to September, despite persistent uncertainty over tariffs and shifting global trade supply chains.

“If there was ever a time for a drum roll, this is it,” said Gene Seroka, executive director of the Port of Los Angeles, during a media briefing on Friday.

“July through September was our best quarter in port history at almost three million TEUs [twenty-foot equivalent units]. Stretch it back to June, and we moved almost four million container units. That’s the strongest four-month stretch that we’ve ever had,” he added.

TEUs are a standard industry measure of cargo capacity based on the volume of a single 20-foot shipping container.

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Seroka cited several factors behind the increase, including a reduction in tariffs from 2025 levels, strong consumer demand ahead of festival season and continued operational challenges at the Suez and Panama canals.

The port’s imports rose 19 per cent year-on-year in September, while exports increased by a more modest 10 per cent.

“Outbound volumes remain softer than normal, which reflects the ongoing challenges facing American farmers and manufacturers,” Seroka noted.

While China’s share of imports through the LA port has declined from roughly 60 per cent in 2018 to a projected 40 per cent in 2026, it remains the port’s largest source of imports, followed by Vietnam.

US imports from China totalled US$308 billion in 2025, down close to 30 per cent, according to data from the US Trade Representative office. US imports from Vietnam rose 42 per cent in the same period.

Willy Shih, a professor at Harvard Business School, said countries like Vietnam and Mexico have seen “a lot of growth” in their imports to the United States, but they still rely on “Chinese intermediate goods”.

“So companies, in some sense, are rearranging the final assembly step while the upstream dependence remains,” he said during a discussion at the LA port media briefing.

Speaking about last month’s summit between Chinese President Xi Jinping and US President Donald Trump in Washington, Shih said that the economic outcomes remained modest and both sides had decided to “kick the can down the road”.

Washington and Beijing agreed to keep their Busan trade truce in place until January 10, 2027, extending it by two months beyond its original November 10 expiry, and launched the Board of Trade mechanism, listing non-sensitive products worth up to US$30 billion on each side that would be eligible for tariff reductions.

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Xi and Trump are due to meet again next month at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation gathering in Shenzhen, Guangdong province, southern China, and again in December at the Group of 20 summit in Miami, Florida.

Despite the frequent meetings and announcement of the trade framework, Shih argued, the situation for traders remains uncertain given the mismatch between Washington’s “transactional approach” and Beijing’s “strategic approach”.

“People need a longer horizon where they can have some stable framework, a stable set of rules to engage in their planning,” Shih said.

“So until our leaders get together and get some stability, we are just going to have to be in an environment where people are planning contingencies and creating options.”