“OUR imagination has been constrained by all the talk of trade wars and deglobalisation, and by the view that the Iran conflict would unleash an energy crisis that would have a negative impact on global demand,” said Maersk chief executive Vincent Clerc on the company’s quarterly call on Thursday.

“Despite years of talk about deglobalisation and despite the uncertainty around oil prices, what we have seen is that demand for container transport is basically shrugging off all of that — you see no sign in the numbers that any of that is actually denting demand.

“For me, compared to where I was three months ago [during the prior call], that’s the key thing that has changed,” said Clerc. “It seems that the market is so resilient that it can shrug off these shocks and keep on pumping volumes at an unchanged level.”

The narrative on spot rates since the spring has been that import cargo is being frontloaded, leading to an earlier and stronger peak season, with demand borrowed from the future.

Clerc countered: “This is not a pull-forward; it is real underlying demand that has led us to increase our expectation of growth in the container market.”

Rolf Habben Jansen, chief executive of Hapag-Lloyd, said during his company’s call on Thursday: “It’s fair to say that the outlook right now is significantly better than it was when we spoke the last time in May.

“When demand started picking up in the course of the second quarter, a lot of people thought that might be short-lived, but even up to today, we still see very robust volume,” he said.

Spot rates looked like they had peaked globally in early July, but they’re now headed back up again.

The Shanghai Containerized Freight Index global composite has risen for the past three weeks. As of Friday, it was at 3,355 points, up 10% from the recent low on July 24.

It has now surpassed its early July peak and is at its highest point since the week of July 26, 2024, during the Red Sea crisis.

The global composite of Drewry’s World Container Index is at $4,339 per feu; it has risen for the past two weeks.

This is not what liner executives expected at the beginning of 2026.

In January, Maersk guided for full-year adjusted earnings before interest and taxes of -$1.5bn to $1bn, with a midpoint of -$250m.

It has revised that upwards twice since then and now expects adjusted 2026 ebit of $4.5bn-$6.5bn. That implies 2H26 ebit of $2.6bn-$4.6bn, with a midpoint 1.9 times higher than 1H26 ebit.

Hapag-Lloyd began the year with expectations for 2026 ebit of -$1.5bn-$500m, with a midpoint of -$500m. It now expects ebit of $100m-$1.1bn.

Import demand growth outpaces landside capacity growth

Maersk and Hapag-Lloyd executives pointed to another rate driver in addition to resilient demand: constrained landside capacity.

“We saw during COVID that when the market volume suddenly increased, we stretched the limit of what the land side could absorb,” said Clerc. “With the normalisation after COVID, we thought we would be free of this for quite a while.

“But what happened is that over the last three years, exports out of the Far East have grown by 25%, trade has become more imbalanced, and we’re now getting gradually to a situation at some of the big ports in our network where we’re stretching the capacity of what they can cope with.

“Bottlenecks on the land side are sticky and we’re starting to feel them,” Clerc said, adding that congestion at key nodes such as Shanghai is “impacting the global situation, not just locally”.

In this narrative, COVID was a sudden shock, what has happened since then calls to mind the “slowly boiling the frog” idiom, and the endpoint is the same: landside capacity constraints.

“Given the resilience of demand, the degree of underinvestment in terminals and the time it will take to bring terminal capacity online to match demand, rate events such as what has happened since May will become more frequent in the years to come,” Clerc predicted.

“We believe we are seeing, right now, a structural change, with the rate environment becoming more benign.” There will be “continued volatility for rates over the coming years, but at a higher average than we have seen because of the frequency of bottlenecks.”

According to Habben Jansen, “This is going to last for a while because building that type of infrastructure is not that easy, and in fairness to the terminal operators, I think everybody has been surprised by the demand growth over the last two to three years. Growth on the dominant [mainline head haul] legs has been a lot stronger than many people anticipated.”

Asia-US spot rates

The US market has driven the recent rebound in spot rates; US imports remain strong despite tariff levels five times higher than they were before US President Donald Trump’s second term began.

Global Port Tracker, produced by the National Retail Federation and Hackett Associates, predicts that US imports for full-year 2026 will be flat versus both 2025 and 2024 — two very strong years.

Both were on par with 2022, during the COVID boom, and were surpassed only by all–time high in 2021.

“Consumer spending has remained resilient despite persistent global uncertainty,” said Hackett Associates founder Ben Hackett.

The SCFI Shanghai-US west coast index is at $6,714 per feu, up 21% over the past three weeks to the highest reading since July 19, 2024.

The WCI Shanghai-Los Angeles assessment is at $6,244 per feu, while Xeneta’s daily assessment of average Asia-US west coast short-term rates was at $6,975 per feu on Friday.

“Transpacific rates hikes on August 1 are still holding, with cargo demand remaining very strong, especially to the US east coast,” said Linerlytica.

The SCFI Shanghai-US east coast index is at $9,568 per feu, up 19% over the past three weeks to the highest level since July 19, 2024.

The WCI Shanghai-New York assessment is at $8,706 per feu, and Xeneta’s Asia-US east coast short-term assessment is at $10,279 per feu.

Asia-Europe spot rates

In contrast to the transpacific market, spot rates in the Asia-Europe lanes have not rebounded since peaking in early July. “Spot rates to Europe continue to slip on softening cargo demand, dashing hopes for a mid-August rate hike,” said Linerlytica.

Nevertheless, Asia-Europe spot rates are still very profitable and much higher than they were a year ago.

European import demand remains strong and is growing, according to Habben Jansen. “Sometimes you have a bit of fluctuation from one week to another, but there is certainly enough demand. I don’t see a real slowdown of bookings.”

The SCFI Shanghai-North Europe index is at $4,811 per feu, down 17% from the recent high in the week of July 3.

The WCI Shanghai-Rotterdam index is at $4,425 per feu, down 10% versus the week of July 9, but up 39% year on year (y/y).

Xeneta assessed Asia-North Europe short-term rates at $4,913 per day on Friday, up 56% y/y.

The SCFI Shanghai-Mediterranean index is at $5,457 per feu, down 22% versus the recent high in the week of July 3.

WCI’s Shanghai-Genoa index is at $5,080 per feu, down 21% versus the week of July 9 but up 65% y/y.

Xeneta assessed Asia-Med short-term rates at $5,783 per feu, up 78% y/y.