Hapag-Lloyd, the world’s fifth-largest container shipping company, says business is booming this week as shipping demand between China and the U.S. takes off again.
“The last couple of days we see a huge surge of volume and now we need to see how long that lasts,” CEO Rolf Habben Jansen told Bloomberg Television on Wednesday.
Jansen said that bookings between China and the U.S. have been up more than 50% in recent weeks. He called it a “pretty significant” increase and said other global trade lanes remain steady for now.
The boost follows a newly announced 90-day truce between the U.S. and China. On Monday, the U.S. dropped tariffs on Chinese imports from 145% to 30%, and China cut its retaliatory duties from 125% to 10%. Trade between the two countries had nearly stopped since early April, when the tariffs went into effect.
While the demand is promising, Jansen said there’s still a lot of uncertainty. “I still remain cautiously optimistic that we will not run into a recession,” he said.
Hapag-Lloyd is also closely monitoring developments in the Red Sea. Like many others, the company has been rerouting ships around Africa since late 2023, when Houthi rebels in Yemen began attacking commercial vessels. That longer route has reduced global shipping capacity and pushed up freight rates.
Even after President Trump recently said the Houthis would stop their attacks, Jansen said it’s too soon to return to normal routes.
“We need visibility that it is safe and that it is going to remain safe for a longer period of time, because what we want to avoid at all costs is to go in and out,” he said.
He added that returning ships to the Red Sea through the Suez Canal too soon could create major backups at ports. Once it’s safe, Hapag-Lloyd plans to ease back into that route slowly, which could take 60 to 90 days.
Earlier this year, Hapag-Lloyd launched a new vessel-sharing agreement with Maersk called the Gemini Cooperation.