Maersk looks to fill up container ships in a flash (sale)

Even as the United States and China called timeout on their tariff war, Maersk, the world’s second-largest container line, wants shippers to get back in the game.

The Denmark-based carrier (MAERSK-B.CO) is offering a flash sale with deep discounts on dozens of inland trade corridors in the United States and Canada through Maersk Spot, the Danish carrier’s on-demand digital booking service aimed at small and medium-size shippers.

The promotional pricing, announced in an email to customers early Wednesday, reflects the unsettled state of trans-Pacific shipping as the supply chain restarts following a chaotic tariff fight.

The escalating tariffs that began with President Donald Trump’s Liberation Day on April 2 led to a de facto trade embargo between the trading partners. The effects were immediate, as shipments from China to the U.S. plunged by 35% amid canceled factory orders, and scores of blanked or suspended voyages as container lines redeployed tonnage to other services.

The tariffs also brought trade to a halt in the middle of contract negotiations between shippers and carriers. Trans-Pacific container rates to the U.S. have fallen some 30% from a year ago, and a number of carriers have announced general rate increases and other charges as a way to shore up prices on the trade.

Those charges, announced prior to the tariff pause, range from a high of $3,000 per forty-foot equivalent unit by Cosco, Evergreen, Hapag-Lloyd and HMM, to $2,000 by CMA CGM, Yang Ming and Zim, to $1,000 by the alliance of Ocean Network Express (ONE).

“Carriers are in the habit of preemptively announcing GRIs,” shipping analyst Lars Jensen wrote in a LinkedIn post Tuesday. “If  market conditions are then strong, these might stick, otherwise they go unnoticed.”

Export-import rates across Maersk’s range of services include $455 for Los Angeles-Long Beach, $375 for Fort Worth, Texas, $430 for Chicago and $571 to Vancouver, Canada, among a long list of other lanes.

Maersk did not immediately respond to questions about the promotion.

Find more articles by Stuart Chirls here.

Related coverage:

Pause and effect: Container rates await new demand

Ocean lines welcome tariff pause, but is the supply chain ready?

Less China means more business for Port of Virginia

Maersk: US-China trade war will swing world container demand

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