EAST and Southeast Asia’s container trade imbalance has seen the largest increase between 2019 and 2024.

Container Trade Statistics figures show that global container volumes grew 8% from 2019 to 183.2m teu in 2024, but growth has been uneven and regional imbalances between exports and imports have increased by 33%, according to BIMCO chief shipping analyst Niels Rasmussen.

In particular, he noted that while regional imbalances totalled 58.8m teu, or 52% of inter-regional trade in 2019, this grew to 84.9m teu, amounting to 70% of trade between regions in 2024.

In absolute terms the imbalance in the East and Southeast Asia region remained the largest at 42.4m teu in 2024, up from 29.4m teu in 2019. 

With the region exporting three teu for every teu imported, this potentially puts it in the crosshairs for tariff action in the increasingly tense current global trade environment.

The imbalance in North America was the largest in 2024, with 2.5 teu imported for every teu exported, outpacing the traditional highest importer Sub-Saharan Africa, where imports were 2.3 times larger than exports.

Meanwhile, the relative imbalance also grew in Europe and the Mediterranean, also in South and Central America regions but reduced in Oceania, Sub-Saharan Africa, the Indian Subcontinent and Middle East regions.

“The increase in trade imbalances has been driven by faster export growth from East and Southeast Asia compared with all other regions except sub-Saharan Africa,” said Rasmussen.

He added that exports from the Asian region had grown by 10.9m teu, while the total inter-regional market has grown by only 9.5m teu since 2019.

This was exacerbated by the fact that East and Southeast Asian imports were 9% lower in 2024 than in 2019 which contributed to a contraction in exports, especially from Europe, the Mediterranean and North America regions.

According to BIMCO, inter-regional trade imbalances started climbing in 2021 as exports from East and Southeast Asia grew 11%. 

By 2024, those regions’ exports ended 21% higher than in 2019, whereas the total inter-regional market grew only 8% in the same period.

BIMCO did not comment on any potential trade implications of these trends but pointed to the negative implications for container lines.

“Imbalances within regions, and specific imbalances for specific container sizes and types, dictate liner operators’ cost for positioning empty containers,” said Rasmussen.

“But the increasing regional imbalances point to a larger and potentially more costly problem. To accommodate growing head-haul trades liner operators must deploy ever more and/or larger ships only to see a relatively smaller revenue potential in the back-haul trades,” he added.