Hormuz hits IE freight through cost, not cargo — San Pedro ports near records in May
The national maritime story reads as a crisis: Iran's closure of the Strait of Hormuz has stranded ships, the IMO has logged at least 46 attacks on shipping in the region since the conflict began February 28, and analysts at Xeneta say full container traffic won't return before mid-September even under this week's U.S.-Iran framework. In the IE, the story runs the other way. The corridor takes no crude through Hormuz — it has no refineries and no port — so the local exposure was never the oil. It is the containers feeding San Pedro Bay, and those kept coming.
Both gateways posted near-record months. The Port of Long Beach moved 842,030 TEUs in May, its third-busiest May ever, with imports up 40% year-over-year. The Port of Los Angeles handled 840,165 TEUs, up 17%, a total its director said was surpassed only during the pandemic surge. Through five months, Long Beach is running even with its record year.
The catch is what those boxes cost to move. Xeneta data shows average Far East–to–U.S. West Coast spot rates hit $3,933 per forty-foot container in early June, up 20% in a single week and 109% above pre-conflict levels. The driver is telling: Xeneta's chief analyst attributes the transpacific spike not to direct Hormuz exposure — the Far East–West Coast lane never ran through the strait — but to secondary effects, as carriers reroute around congestion building at transshipment hubs like Singapore and Port Klang. Drewry's index puts Shanghai–Los Angeles at $4,565 per container. The disruption reached IE-bound freight through the back door, as cost, while throughput held.
For an operator, that reframes the planning problem. The risk to watch isn't an import collapse starving warehouse demand — May's volumes argue the opposite. It's margin: higher per-container freight, elevated bunker-fuel surcharges, war-risk insurance premiums, and less predictable vessel arrivals that complicate gate, chassis, and free-time planning. Port volumes lead IE warehouse absorption, so the demand signal still points up for now.
Two clocks are worth separating. The May strength is partly a soft comparison against last spring's tariff trough — Long Beach handled just 639,160 TEUs in May 2025 — and partly front-loading, as importers pull cargo forward to beat the very cost increases Hormuz is driving. That pull-forward borrows from later in the year. The National Retail Federation's Global Port Tracker already forecasts year-over-year declines at major U.S. ports in July, August, and September as front-loading fades, a slowdown that arrives on its own schedule regardless of when Hormuz reopens. The Port of LA's own FY2026/27 budget plans for 9.3 million container units, 7% below the current year. The cost pressure is here now; the volume question lands in the back half.