Shipping customers have canceled 30% of US orders from China amid tariff chaos, logistics giant says

Major shipping container company Hapag-Lloyd said its customers have canceled 30% of orders from China to the United States as President Trump’s stiff tariffs cause chaos at ports around the world.

Meanwhile, there has been a “massive increase” in demand for shipments from Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam, the German shipping company, which is one of the largest in the world, told Reuters.

“We see these bookings rising significantly. But the market is smaller than the Chinese one – so the increase in South East Asia cannot compensate the cancellations from China,” a Hapag-Lloyd spokesperson told The Post.

The nations are popular manufacturing alternatives to China, a key hub for the production of goods like electronics, toys and clothing, which have been slapped with a hefty 145% rate in Trump’s tariff war. China retaliated with a 125% tax on US imports.

Customers started canceling orders en masse when Trump on April 2 unveiled his so-called “reciprocal” tariffs, a slew of harsh rates on many nations, the shipping company told The Post.

The president has since put most of these tariffs on hold for 90 days, putting a 10% tax in place as global leaders meet for negotiations.

As trade tensions heat up, Hapag-Lloyd has been using smaller vessels in some cases to ship containers to the US, a spokesperson told Reuters.

Some US companies may pass along the added costs from the tax to consumers, hiking their prices, while small businesses warn they won’t be able to afford orders for the second half of this year.

Without a deal for lower rates, shoppers could start to see store shelves thinning out by the summer as firms scale back and cancel orders, industry experts told The Post.

Hapag-Lloyd, which has an approximately $27 billion market cap, warned in its 2025 forecast of a hit to earnings.

“The economic and geopolitical environment remains fragile,” CEO Rolf Habben Jansen said in a statement. “In this context, we anticipate earnings in 2025 to be lower than in 2024.”

Late on Tuesday, Trump gave investors and businesses hope for a reprieve, signaling that lower tax rates on China could be in the works.

The 145% rate on China is “very high, and it won’t be that high…No, it won’t be anywhere near that high. It’ll come down substantially,” Trump said.

He warned that “if they don’t make a deal, we’ll set the deal.”

The president also backtracked on his threat to fire Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell, and his administration hinted that US-China trade tensions may soon de-escalate, sending US stocks roaring back late Tuesday afternoon into Wednesday morning.

With Post wires