The war in Iran has failed to slow down container traffic at the Port of Los Angeles, with the California gateway handling its largest total cargo volumes of 2026. The port processed 890,861 20-foot equivalent units (TEUs) in April, 5.7 percent above last year’s totals.
Loaded imports entering the San Pedro Bay port totaled 459,825 TEUs, an increase of 4.7 percent compared to last year and 20.8 percent higher than March. Loaded exports came in at 127,726 TEUs, 0.5 percent lower than April 2025. Empties landed at 303,310 TEUs, 10.2 percent above last year.
Although the National Retail Federation’s Global Port Tracker released earlier this month indicates that major ports will see year-over-year declines in inbound cargo volumes starting in July, Port of Los Angeles executive director Gene Seroka said during a Monday media briefing that cargo flow for the coming months “looks good.” Seroka noted the next few months will have skewed figures due to comparisons to last year, in which August tariff deadlines led companies to front-load goods into the U.S. in July.
“During my visit to China, I didn’t see anyone canceling purchase orders or canceling orders at factories,” Seroka said. “It’s just a matter of that narrow planning horizon and buying what you speculate the American consumer is going to be doing 90 to 120 days in advance of those cargo containers coming in here.”
As President Donald Trump preps for his Thursday meeting with China’s President Xi Jinping in Beijing, former U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai said during the briefing that the meeting will need to bring clarity to the future of the relationship between both countries.
“Clarity has been lacking in the last year and three or four months. What we have seen are a lot of fireworks. We’ve seen the temperature get dialed up and then back. I think that China and the United States have demonstrated to each other that each one has dominance in certain industrial production and trade areas that they can use to choke each other,” Tai said. “Once you have each other’s attention, then you actually need to have an agenda and a plan in place for the short term, the medium term and the long term for making this very important, complicated and challenged trade relationship work.”
That high-stakes meeting is likely to include discussions related to the Iran war. The U.S. hopes China will attempt to convince Iran to agree to a deal to end the conflict, or at least back off on threats against shipping in the Strait of Hormuz.
Seroka said “it’s going to take confidence” for shipping lines to resume normal operations through the strait, which carries 20 percent of the world’s oil supply.
“We’re not there yet,” Seroka said. “I haven’t spoken to a single executive who wants to make the first move in this setting. A ceasefire announcement or a few vessels moving under military escort is not enough to restore that confidence.”
The war in Iran has also had a meaningful impact on the California trucking industry, with diesel prices increasing 50 percent on average since the start of the conflict. Thirty percent of the state’s crude imports come from the Middle East.
According to Seroka, most of the 1,200 trucking companies serving the port are small businesses with five or fewer trucks.
“Some are trying to pass that cost in the supply chain to the importer or the exporter. But they also have to compete with the big trucking firms who may be able to absorb a little bit more, a little bit longer on this price increase than the smaller companies can,” said Seroka. “At some point it’s going to hit the American consumer more so than just at the gas tank.”
As trade policies have shifted the global trade landscape, Seroka highlighted that Vietnam’s growth as a sourcing hub has tilted the scales in pricing power, while also boosting the reliability of the Southeast Asian nation’s vendors.
Although cheaper landed costs used to favor Vietnam because they were an emerging manufacturing market, Seroka said the country “no longer really holds that moniker,” noting that pricing between Vietnamese- and Chinese-manufactured goods “is going to be really close.”
On the other hand, Vietnamese vendors are “actively selling to American importers saying, ‘Look, we’re just a little bit below China [in landed costs]. Maybe not much, but you’re not going to see us in the news every day,’” Seroka said. “You’re going to have a little more stable effect with respect to policy and you’re not going to have that temperature dial going up and down on a regular basis.”
Seroka is seeing this composition shift at his own port in real time. Although the percentage of imported cargo from China handled by the L.A. gateway has declined from 60 percent to 40 percent since 2018, and is “still softening below that,” the port director noted the California complex continues to grow its volumes.
More than 95 percent of the port’s trade is with Asian partners, with China, Japan, Korea, Taiwan and Vietnam being the top five countries, Seroka said.
