Forecasts down again for US container volumes

That would be down from 16.5m teu in 2007 and the lowest annual throughput since 2005, when year-end volumes totalled 15.4m teu. Port Tracker’s earlier forecasts of year-end drops were 4% in August and 6% in September.

“This has clearly been a difficult year and we still have a challenging holiday season ahead of us,” said NRF vice president for supply chain and customs policy Jonathan Gold. “Retailers are being careful to import only as much merchandise as they think they can sell.”

According to Port Tracker, the ports included in its survey handled 1.37m teu of inbound container traffic in August, the most recent month for which numbers are available. That was up 4% from the preceding month but down 5.9% from August 2007.