BLACKETT. June 5, 2026

Shanghai-LA up 31% and Shanghai-NY up 20% on a single print, with five straight weeks of gains underneath it.

Container rates jump $640 in a week Drewry's World Container Index closed Thursday at $3,433 per 40ft container, up 23% from the prior week and the fifth straight weekly gain. Drewry's own read, backed by multiple carrier sources, is that peak season started earlier than usual this year, and both Transpacific and Asia-Europe trades absorbed demand that wasn't priced into May contracts. It's the biggest single-week jump on the index in over a year.

Transpacific carries the move Shanghai to Los Angeles climbed 31% to $4,565 per FEU, Shanghai to New York 20% to $5,505. Carriers spent April and early May raising FAK levels and laying down peak surcharges, ONE at $2,000 per FEU eastbound from June 1, CMA CGM in the $4,700 range on Asia-Europe and $5,500 to $5,700 on Asia-Mediterranean. The pricing structure was built for a peak that was supposed to land in July, and it landed now instead.

The overcapacity argument just got harder to make Bank of America has been flagging structural overcapacity ahead, with global containership capacity on track to rise around 36% between 2023 and 2027 per Bloomberg Intelligence, and Drewry's Container Forecaster has demand contracting 1.1% in 2026 if liners return fully to the Red Sea. None of that matters when peak compresses into a four-week window, blank sailings stay tight at 47 expected across major East-West trades over the next five weeks, and shippers find the rate sheet has moved twice before their PO clears.

Ebrard's read on the alternative Mexico's Marcelo Ebrard, after Round 1 closed in Mexico City May 29: "What do we want? No tariffs. But they say, 'No, well, we want tariffs, tariffs, tariffs.' The only country that has 85% of exports today without tariffs is us and Canada. Everyone else is paying something." For shippers running Asia-origin containers into US warehouses, the rate jump and the tariff posture are two sides of the same calculation, and the nearshoring math gets more defensible every week the ocean spot moves like this.

The composite broke out to $3,433 per FEU, its strongest single-week gain since 2024, with Transpacific lanes leading.

Source: Drewry World Container Index, June 4, 2026.

Drewry's own line on it: peak season started earlier than usual. Eight TPEB blank sailings this week, 47 expected over the next five weeks across major East-West trades out of roughly 700 scheduled departures.

USMCA review running past July 1, Mexico keeps moving USTR signaled this week that the bilateral review will run past the July 1 statutory deadline, with Round 2 in Washington on June 16 and 17 covering agriculture and "a level playing field," and Round 3 set for Mexico City the week of July 20. Mexico is working through 52 US demands and has tabled 12 of its own, plus tariffs on 1,400 product categories targeting Chinese imports that are already in force. That's the alignment USTR has been asking for since the Joint Review framework was drafted.

Ebrard publicly calling for Canada in After Round 1 wrapped, Ebrard urged Canada to "join USMCA review negotiations," which is a different posture from the bilateral-with-Mexico-first sequencing Greer has been running. The framing matters because Mexico and Canada signed 10 MoUs in May during Ebrard's trade mission to Toronto and Montreal, covering life sciences, agri-food, education and creative industries, the largest such mission Mexico has run with Canada. Bilateral commerce sits north of $56 billion, with cumulative Canadian FDI in Mexico at $56.85 billion since 1999, so the relationship has scaffolding underneath the talking points.

Round 1 was Goettman, not Greer Deputy USTR Jeff Goettman led the US delegation in Mexico City on May 28 and 29 because Greer was in France for the OECD Ministerial Council. The topics on the table were automotive rules of origin, steel and aluminum, and regional economic security, with separate language in the USTR press release flagging cooperation on medical devices, pharmaceuticals and cosmetic products. The second bucket has barely registered in the coverage so far and will matter more in Round 2 than the auto headlines suggest.

ISM Manufacturing closes a strong week for industrial signals Monday's ISM came in at 54%, the highest reading since May 2022, with New Orders at 56.8% running five straight months in expansion. For shippers reading the freight market, the ISM number is the demand side of the same equation the WCI is pricing, factories ordering more inputs while ocean capacity gets tighter into peak. The two prints don't usually align this cleanly, which is why the rate jump is harder to write off as a one-week move.

BLACKETT.