IN Brief:
- Asia-US West Coast container rates fell 1% to $6,129/FEU, while East Coast pricing held at $9,012/FEU.
- Asia-Northern Europe and Mediterranean ocean rates eased, but China-Northern Europe airfreight rose 5%.
- Congestion, tariffs, capacity management, and an extended transpacific peak are preventing a uniform freight-market correction.
Freightos data is showing increasingly different conditions across the main Asian export trades, with container rates easing on several lanes while parts of the transpacific market remain unexpectedly firm and China-Europe airfreight moves higher. The latest Freightos Baltic Index has Asia-US West Coast prices down 1% to $6,129 per FEU and East Coast rates unchanged at $9,012 per FEU.
Asia-Northern Europe container pricing declined 1% to $5,531 per FEU, while Asia-Mediterranean rates fell 2% to $6,554. Airfreight moved differently: China-Northern Europe prices increased 5% to $4.02/kg, while China-North America fell 2% to $5.67/kg.
The relatively modest weekly percentages disguise a larger change in direction. Asia-Europe ocean rates have been losing momentum since their early-July highs, with Northern Europe pricing now around 14% below its peak and Mediterranean rates about 16% lower. That suggests the early 2026 peak season is beginning to unwind on those trades even though absolute rates remain elevated.
The transpacific is proving less straightforward. Freightos says US East Coast rates have held close to $9,000 per FEU since early July, while West Coast pricing had fallen by roughly 20% from a peak above $7,500 before daily rates moved back above $7,000 following 1 August general rate increases.
That rebound matters because shippers had been expected to reduce volumes more sharply after bringing cargo forward earlier in the summer. The front-loading was driven partly by expected tariff changes and higher Q3 costs, encouraging some importers to move peak-season orders before the normal shipping window.
Freightos now points to reports of stronger-than-expected transpacific demand, suggesting that the peak may last longer than initially forecast. The tariff outcome is one possible reason: businesses that accelerated orders in anticipation of much higher duties did not face the scale of increase some had feared, leaving room for additional purchasing to continue.
The result is a freight market in which the broad direction depends heavily on the lane being bought. A procurement team sourcing container space from Shanghai to Northern Europe is seeing a different commercial environment from one negotiating US East Coast allocations, even though both movements begin in the same Asian export region.
Capacity management adds another variable. Carriers can respond to softer demand by cancelling sailings, shifting vessels between trades, or delaying planned capacity increases. That means a reduction in underlying cargo volume does not automatically produce the same percentage reduction in available freight rates.
Recent typhoons in the Far East are also restricting effective supply. Port disruption and congestion at major Asian hubs can tie ships up for longer, removing capacity from subsequent sailings even where scheduled fleet deployment has not changed. Freightos reports delays around Shanghai, Ningbo, Shenzhen, and Hong Kong, with some carriers skipping calls as networks recover.
For importers, this makes weekly benchmark movements useful but insufficient on their own. An index can show that a trade is cooling while an individual shipper still faces higher quotations because a particular sailing is full, equipment is constrained, or a carrier has withdrawn capacity from the required port pair.
The difference between ocean and airfreight reinforces that point. China-Northern Europe air pricing rose 5% during the same week that the corresponding ocean market fell. Air cargo responds to a different balance of aircraft capacity, high-value manufacturing demand, urgency, and product mix, so a softening container market does not automatically reduce the cost of moving time-sensitive goods.
Industrial buyers often use the two modes together rather than choosing one exclusively. Routine inventory can remain on ocean services while urgent components, production shortages, or high-value goods are moved by air. When the relative price of each mode changes, procurement teams can adjust that split, provided inventory and production schedules allow enough time.
The latest figures also demonstrate the limits of treating freight as one global budget line. Lane-specific rates, bunker adjustments, surcharges, equipment requirements, and contracted allocations can move independently. Businesses applying a single assumed inflation or deflation percentage across their freight spend risk missing where the actual cost pressure has shifted.
Freightos’ data therefore points to fragmentation rather than a clean end to peak season. Asia-Europe ocean demand is cooling, transpacific strength is proving more persistent, airfreight remains mixed, and congestion is reducing some of the capacity that softer demand would normally release.
For August procurement, the useful question is no longer whether freight rates are rising or falling in general. It is which lane, which mode, and which capacity constraint is determining the executable price. The current market is providing several different answers at once.
