Retailers Predict Continued Declines for Container Imports Through Q1 2026

Retailers believe container imports will continue a steady decline through the first quarter of 2026 (Port of Los Angeles file photo)

Published Nov 7, 2025 9:51 PM by The Maritime Executive

 

The National Retail Federation, an industry trade group, issued its monthly report on expected import volumes through the major U.S. container ports, projecting that volumes will fall below two million TEU per month and continue a steady decline through the first quarter of 2026. With tariff uncertainty continuing but most holiday merchandise already in stores or warehouses, it projects that import cargo volume will see the usual end-of-year slowdown in November and December, but with the recent reductions in tariffs will increase slightly from earlier forecasts.

“We’ve spent most of the year worried about the impact of tariffs on both inflation and the supply chain, but the holiday season is here and mitigation efforts appear to have paid off,” said Jonathan Gold, NRF Vice President for Supply Chain and Customs Policy. 

The NRF believes that retailers have already stocked up for the season, front-loading their imports to beat some of the tariff uncertainties and to take advantage of earlier pauses in the tariff program. Saying that retailers have inventory and that the consumer overall remains positive, the NRF issued its forecast for 2025 holiday sales, saying they will increase between 3.7 and 4.2 percent compared with 2024. It would be the first time U.S. holiday season sales have topped $1 billion.

The NRF’s Global Port Tracker projects that September 2025 was the last month with container import volumes above two million TEU. It forecasts the final number for October, when the ports have all released data, will be at 1.99 million TEU and will slide to 1.85 million TEU in November and 1.75 million TEU in December.

November and December, the NRF notes, would be the slowest months of 2025. December, based on its forecast, would have the lowest volumes since 1.62 million TEU in March 2023. In addition to month-to-month sequential declines, the report shows year-over-year declines of between 11.5 percent and nearly 18 percent.

Traditionally, the last two months of the year are slow, but the large year-over-year declines the report states are partly because imports in late 2024 were elevated by concerns over port strikes. In addition, this year’s tariff-driven front-loading pulled up late-year cargo.

Hackett Associates Founder Ben Hackett said the on-again, off-again tariff policy has made long-term planning difficult for importers and ocean carriers alike. “These conditions make market forecasting highly uncertain,” said Hackett. “Our trade outlook is for a small decline in imports this year compared with 2024 and a further, larger decline in the first quarter of 2026.”

The NRF forecasts that retail imports will finish 2025 down more than two percent versus 2024. They forecast a total of 24.9 million TEU, down from 25.5 million TEU in 2025.

They expect that the declines will continue into 2026. January 2026 is forecast at 1.98 million TEU, down 11.1 percent year-over-year; February at 1.85 million TEU, down 9 percent, and March at 1.79 million TEU, down 16.7 percent.

TEU, 

or Twenty- foot Equivalent Unit, is a standard measurement used in shipping to describe the capacity of container ships and terminals. It represents the volume of a standard 20-foot shipping container, which is widely used in the maritime and logistics industry.

• TEU is essential for comparing cargo volumes and ship capacities across the globe. 

  2
• It helps define the capacity of container ships and container terminals to store cargo. 

  1
• A forty-foot equivalent unit (FEU) is defined as two TEUs. 

  1
• • 
    

 

Unions Form Global Alliance to Oppose Port Automation

ILA has led the call for unions worldwide to organize together to oppose port automation (ILA)

Published Nov 7, 2025 9:49 PM by The Maritime Executive

Unions continue their resistance against efforts by ports and terminal logistics operators across the globe to automate processes in order to enhance efficiency. A group of unions announced that they formed an alliance aimed at fighting automation on the basis that it is killing dock workers’ jobs.

Following a two-day summit in Lisbon, Portugal, that brought together hundreds of trade union representatives from more than 60 countries alongside leaders, academics, and experts from the maritime and port sectors, the unions report that a framework has been adopted to fight any efforts by ports to invest in automating operations. The framework was developed based on the unions’ assertion that automation does not modernize ports but is done to eliminate workers and maximize profits.

The summit, held under the banner of “People Over Profits: Anti-Automation” and jointly organized by the International Dockworkers Council (IDC) and the International Longshoremen’s Association (ILA), resolved to establish what is being termed a new Global Maritime Alliance. They report it will be committed to halting the expansion of automation in ports worldwide. The goal is to rally port workers across the globe to engage in coordinated strike actions.

In the resolution, the unions were categorical that they will fight any automation process that involves job losses or violations of rights. They went ahead to reaffirm collective bargaining as an essential tool to regulate technological changes in ports. In case ports decide to impose terminal automations without consultations and consent from unions, the union leaders report that dockworkers will act in a united and coordinated structure to paralyze operations.

Though the IDC and the ILA contend that the ports of the future must be modern, green, and efficient, they said it cannot happen at the expense of jobs. The unions are calling for port authorities across the globe to “craft a formula of integrating dock workers in their technological investments.”

Across the globe, unions have been staging disruptive job actions against automation. In 2024, the ILA paralyzed operations across 36 ports primarily along the East Coast and the Gulf Coast when over 47,000 workers staged industrial action in protests over compensation and the use of automation. Similar actions have occurred against automation by ports in Canada, New Zealand, and Australia, among others.

“If any company decides to implement job-destroying automation in any port whose workers are part of this new alliance, we will confront it with a global strike of three to four weeks,” said Harold J. Daggett, ILA President.

The alliance hopes that going forward, opposition to port automations will not be a fragmented local resistance but a global strategy.

“If their strategy is global, ours must be too. Wherever there is a port, there will be an organized union, and wherever a worker is threatened, there will be international solidarity,” noted Jordi Aragunde, IDC International Labour Coordinator.

 

China commands 47% of remote sensing research, while U.S. produces just 9%, NYU Tandon study reveals

NYU Tandon School of Engineering

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The United States is falling far behind China in remote sensing research, according to a comprehensive new study that tracked seven decades of academic publishing and reveals a notable reversal in global technological standing.

China now accounts for nearly half of all peer-reviewed journal publications in this critical field, while American output has declined to single digits.

"This represents one of the most significant shifts in global technological leadership in recent history," said Debra Laefer, the lead author of the study. Laefer is a NYU Tandon Civil and Urban Engineering professor, and a faculty member of Tandon’s Center for Urban Science + Progress.

Published in the journal Geomatics, the research analyzed over 126,000 papers published between 1961 and 2023 to document how China has surged from virtually no presence from the 1960s through the 1990s to 47% of remote sensing publications by 2023, while the United States has dropped from producing 88% of research in the 1960s to only 9% today.

Remote sensing — the science of gathering information from a distance using technologies like laser scanning, imagery, and hyperspectral imagery from the ground, the air, and even space — underpins critical applications from autonomous vehicles to climate monitoring and national security.

The global market was valued at $452 billion in 2022 and is projected to reach $1.44 trillion by 2030, making leadership in this field essential for economic competitiveness. Laefer emphasized that understanding who drives technical expertise and funding in this area is "of national and international importance, as they are inextricably linked with intellectual property generation, which is also shown in our data."

The research reveals that remote sensing scholarship has experienced exponential growth, expanding from roughly a dozen papers annually in the 1960s to more than 13,000 per year by 2023, a thousand-fold increase that far outpaces general scientific publishing trends.

Laefer and co-author Jingru Hua — at the time a master’s student in the NYU Center for Data Science — attribute this surge to decreased equipment costs, greater global participation, digital-only publishing, and most significantly, the adoption of artificial intelligence techniques like machine learning and deep learning.

Perhaps most notable for American competitiveness, the research demonstrates a near-perfect correlation between national funding and publication output. China's National Natural Science Foundation now appears in funding acknowledgments for over 53% of remote sensing papers published between 2021 and 2023, while U.S. agencies are credited in only 5%.

The study identified six Chinese funding entities among the top ten global funders in recent years, compared to only two American organizations, NASA and the National Science Foundation (NSF). NASA, once the dominant funder at 50% of publications through the 1990s, has been vastly outpaced by Chinese funding organizations. Notably, NSF does not have dedicated divisions specifically for geomatics (the science of gathering and analyzing geographic data) or geodesy (the science of measuring Earth's shape and positions on it).

China's research dominance extends to intellectual property generation as well. According to patent data included in the study, China now accounts for the majority of remote sensing patents filed globally. In just the three years from 2021 to 2023, over 43,000 patents containing "remote sensing" were filed worldwide, with China responsible for the clear majority, a dramatic reversal from the late 20th century when the United States held near-total dominance.

The researchers' analysis of publication titles reveals evolving technological priorities. Early decades focused heavily on satellite imagery, but recent years show explosive growth in artificial intelligence techniques, with terms like "deep learning" and "machine learning" now dominating publication titles. The number of papers mentioning these techniques has grown exponentially, reaching over 80,000 publications by 2023.

The findings have implications for technological competitiveness. Remote sensing capabilities underpin emerging technologies including augmented reality, autonomous navigation, and digital twins, all important areas for economic and commercial applications. With China's continued investment and the field's commercial value expected to triple by 2030, the study provides a baseline for understanding shifts in this important technological domain.

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Journal

Geomatics

DOI

10.3390/geomatics5030047 

Method of Research

Content analysis

Subject of Research

Not applicable

Article Title

Remote Sensing Publications 1961–2023—Analysis of National and Global Trends

 

Shopping data reveals surprising urban food deserts

University of Adelaide

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A new approach to identifying food deserts using grocery store purchase data suggests that store proximity is not the driver of nutritionally deficient diets – it is financial and social inequality.

In a study led by the University of Adelaide, researchers found nutritional disadvantage is concentrated in low-income and minority communities, even in areas where stores are nearby.

“Food deserts refer to areas where residents are unable to access a nutritious diet, where barriers to obtaining healthy foods are thought to underpin dietary behaviour,” says Tayla Broadbridge, from the University’s School of Computer and Mathematical Sciences, who led the study.

“Previous attempts to identify food deserts have relied on assumptions about the relationships between store locations, sociodemographic factors, and access to healthy food.

“These methods typically classify areas as food deserts without any direct, quantitative link to food purchase data or dietary patterns.

“Treating food access as only a store distribution problem ignores critical factors such as cultural and economic landscapes that shape residents’ urban life and mobility, and, consequently, their shopping behaviour.

“Our study demonstrates that analysing the relationship between food purchasing patterns and sociodemographic factors can identify food deserts that aren’t picked up by other methods, as well as the factors that drive them.”

Tayla, who also holds a position in the School of Mathematics at the University of Nottingham, United Kingdom, completed her study by using food purchase records from London locations of the British multinational grocery chain, Tesco.

“We analysed supermarket-transaction data from 1.6 million London customers and identified neighbourhoods where residents’ purchases follow a nutrient-deficient pattern, highlighting areas that are characteristic of food deserts,” says Tayla.

“Our model identified several areas in London’s east, such as Newham, Barking, and Dagenham, and some areas of London’s northwest, such as Ealing and Brent, which adhered to high-sugar and high-carbohydrate purchases, suggesting residents in these areas are not accessing a nutritionally adequate diet.”

Though Tayla’s model identified that nutrient deficient purchasing is associated with household income and minority ethnic communities, the influence of these factors varies across the city.

“These spatial differences in associations may reflect a combination of socioeconomic conditions, local food retail environments, or varying food preference,” says Tayla, whose study was published in PLOS Complex Systems.

“The strong variation in these relationships across London’s neighbourhoods highlights the need for locally tailored, culturally sensitive strategies to improve access to healthy food.

“Further work with local experts is needed to better understand these context-specific relationships and to develop area-specific, context-sensitive interventions as part of local public health strategies.”

While this study focused on Tesco purchases in London, Tayla says it could be replicated in other contexts, including Australia.

“This study moves beyond the reliance on sociodemographic and environment characteristics alone when identifying food deserts,” Tayla says.

“Applied in Australia, our method could use loyalty card data from major grocery retailers such as Woolworths or Coles to show where nutritional disadvantage is most concentrated, and how it relates to local sociodemographic factors.

“This will help local councils and communities target support where it’s needed most.”

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DOI

10.1371/journal.pcsy.0000072 

 

Green space leads to fewer hospitalizations for mental health

Urban vegetation linked to lower risks of hospital admissions for mental disorders: 20+ year study of seven countries

Monash University

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Professor Yuming Guo

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Credit: Monash University

Higher levels of greenness are associated with lower risks of hospital admissions for mental disorders, finds an analysis of data from seven countries over two decades, published in the BMJ’s climate issue today.

Local greenness was associated with a 7% reduction in hospital admissions for all cause mental disorders, with stronger associations for substance use disorders (9%), psychotic disorders (7%), and dementia (6%). However, associations varied across countries and disorders. For example, Brazil, Chile, and Thailand showed consistent protective associations across most disorders, while in Australia and Canada, greenness was associated with modestly increased risks for all cause mental disorders and for several specific disorders. 

The study, led by Professors Shandy Li and Yuming Guo from Monash University in Australia suggests that this protective effect of a person’s mental health increases with greater exposure to greenness, with no clear threshold.

Professor Guo said that the study “provides clear evidence that should inform urban design and health policy to better protect mental health,” he said.    

Mental wellbeing remains a global challenge. It’s estimated that 1.1 billion people had mental disorders in 2021, contributing to 14% of the global disease burden with associated economic and societal costs.

While the links between mental health and green space has been linked previously, the Monash study is the largest to analyze      data from 11.4 million hospital admissions for mental disorders from 6,842 locations in seven countries (Australia, Brazil, Canada, Chile, New Zealand, South Korea, and Thailand) from 2000 to 2019.

In their analysis the researchers included:

• All cause mental disorders and six specific categories (psychotic disorders, substance use disorders, mood disorders, behavioural disorders, dementia, and anxiety).
• Greenness measured by the normalised difference vegetation index (NDVI), a widely used and reliable satellite derived metric for assessing vegetation levels in a given area.
• Factors including population levels, weather conditions, air pollutants, socioeconomic indicators and seasonality were all taken into account.
• Models were stratified by sex, age, urbanisation, and season.

Overall, protective associations were strongest in urban areas, where an estimated 7,712 hospital admissions for mental disorders annually were potentially preventable through greater exposure to greenness.

Seasonal patterns were also found in urban areas, suggesting that climate and weather conditions play a crucial role in how green spaces are used and perceived, say the authors.

Further analysis in urban areas suggested that a 10% increase in greenness was associated with fewer hospital admissions for mental disorders ranging from around 1 per 100,000 in South Korea to approximately 1,000 per 100,000 in New Zealand.

This is an observational study so no firm conclusions can be drawn about cause and effect and the authors acknowledge the uncertainties of using hospital admission data from multiple countries. They also point out that their results only capture severe disorders requiring inpatient care so underestimate the full burden of mental health.

Professor Guo said that a considerable proportion or rate of hospital admissions for mental disorders may be associated with exposure to greenness and could potentially be reduced through greening interventions under realistic scenarios.

“These mental health benefits may also bring broader economic and social advantages, including reduced healthcare costs, less strain on health systems, improved workplace productivity, and enhanced community wellbeing,” he said.

“Future research should aim to explore the differential effects of various types of green spaces, such as parks or forests, on mental health outcomes, and focus on assessing the quality and accessibility of green spaces.”

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Journal

BMJ

DOI

10.1136/bmj-2025-084618 

Method of Research

Meta-analysis

Article Title

Greenness and hospital admissions for cause specific mental disorders: multicountry time series study

Article Publication Date

6-Nov-2025