Trans-Pacific Ocean Rates: Use AI to Stay Ahead

Ocean freight pricing isn’t “down” or “up” right now—it’s uneven. One week you’re staring at a rate bump that looks like the market is tightening; the next week the bump evaporates and you’re back to shopping the spot market.

That whiplash is exactly what’s playing out on the key Asia–U.S. trade lanes in December 2025. Carriers are trying to push higher rates while also cutting sailings, but persistent overcapacity and shaky demand are making those increases hard to hold. Meanwhile, Asia–Europe lanes are behaving very differently: rate increases are sticking more often, and demand is showing signs of life as pre–Lunar New Year shipping starts earlier.

For shippers, forwarders, and logistics teams, this isn’t just a “market update.” It’s a forecasting and routing problem—one that punishes anyone relying on static assumptions. In the AI in Transportation & Logistics series, I keep coming back to one point: when the network is unstable, decision quality beats rate shopping. AI-driven forecasting and route optimization are how you stay in control when carriers start blanking sailings and adjusting prices like a metronome.

What’s driving the “sawtooth” rate pattern on Asia–U.S. lanes

Answer first: trans-Pacific rates are bouncing because carriers are trying to manage pricing with general rate increases (GRIs) and blank sailings, but the market still has too much capacity for demand.

Recent market data shows the split clearly:

• Asia–U.S. West Coast spot rates fell 6% week over week to $1,963 per FEU after a start-of-month GRI bump.
• Asia–U.S. East Coast spot rates rose 8% to $3,150 per FEU, yet remain 15% lower than a month ago.

That’s not a stable trend line. It’s a repeated cycle: raise, slip, raise, slip.

Why blank sailings aren’t “fixing” rates

Blank sailings (canceled voyages) reduce available slots on paper. But on the trans-Pacific right now, that tool has limits.

Here’s the core issue: carriers are still deploying new tonnage into a soft market. When fleet capacity keeps growing, carriers must cancel more sailings just to keep supply from overwhelming demand. It becomes a treadmill.

For logistics teams, the operational consequence isn’t just pricing. It’s service reliability:

• fewer weekly departures
• rolling bookings (containers pushed to later sailings)
• more split shipments to keep ETAs intact

That reliability hit is often more expensive than the rate itself—especially when it triggers expedited drayage, premium transload, air freight “rescues,” or lost sales.

Contract vs. spot: why the 60/40 split matters more in Q4

About 60% of ocean cargo moves under contract and 40% moves on spot (with some seasonal variability). When carriers attempt GRIs in a loose market, shippers often respond by:

• holding more volume for spot (if service is acceptable)
• splitting allocation across carriers to reduce rolling risk
• pushing for contract renegotiations earlier than planned

The mistake I see most: teams treat this as a procurement choice only. It’s not. It’s a risk allocation decision—between price risk (spot) and service risk (under-performing contracted strings).

The wildcards: Lunar New Year timing and U.S. tariff uncertainty

Answer first: demand forecasting is harder this year because pre–Lunar New Year ordering may pull volumes forward, while tariff uncertainty may cause importers to pause or surge unpredictably.

The market is entering the annual Lunar New Year (LNY) setup, when Chinese factories typically close for roughly two weeks and exporters rush to ship ahead of shutdowns. Carriers expect that ramp to be one of the few dependable demand boosts in the near term.

But December 2025 has an extra layer of uncertainty: U.S. tariff policy.

Tariffs can freeze demand—or create a sudden spike

Some U.S. manufacturers are reportedly pausing imports on the bet that duties may fall if legal challenges succeed. A decision is not expected until January at the earliest, and there’s also speculation that new policy routes could restore levies even if one mechanism is struck down.

From a planning perspective, this creates two opposite risks:

1. Pause risk: volumes drop, carriers fight harder for utilization, GRIs fail, and schedule reliability still suffers due to blank-sailing choreography.
2. Surge risk: a decision (or even a credible rumor) triggers a rush to import, pushing spot rates up fast—often faster than internal approval cycles can handle.

If your playbook is “wait for the market to settle,” you’ll keep getting surprised.

Why Asia–Europe looks steadier (and what it teaches trans-Pacific shippers)

Answer first: Asia–Europe rates are holding increases more consistently because capacity management has been more effective and demand is ticking up earlier, likely influenced by longer lead times and risk buffering.

On Asia–Europe and Asia–Mediterranean lanes, carriers have been more successful with repeated GRIs and capacity reductions. Recent pricing signals include:

• Asia–Mediterranean around $3,342 per FEU after a 15% early-month jump.
• Asia–North Europe around $2,449 per FEU, still well above mid-October lows.

There are also signs of demand improving ahead of LNY—something observed in prior years when December prices climbed sharply.

Red Sea risk is still shaping lead times and inventory behavior

Geopolitical instability around the Red Sea has already forced rerouting via the Cape of Good Hope at various points since late 2023, effectively increasing transit times and reducing effective capacity. Even the possibility of disruption changes shipper behavior:

• earlier ordering
• higher safety stock targets
• more willingness to pay for reliability

This is the lesson for trans-Pacific shippers: markets don’t move only on “today’s volume.” They move on expected disruption and how quickly buyers attempt to build buffers.

Where AI actually helps: forecasting, routing, and capacity planning

Answer first: AI is most valuable when it turns messy market signals—rates, blank sailings, port dwell, policy risk—into specific operational decisions: when to ship, which port pair to use, and how to split allocations.

Most companies get this wrong by treating “AI in logistics” as a dashboard project. Dashboards are fine, but they don’t decide anything. You need systems that recommend actions and quantify trade-offs.

1) Predict rate movement from drivers, not headlines

A practical AI forecasting approach uses a mix of:

• historical spot and contract rate behavior by lane
• capacity signals (blank sailings, vessel deployments, alliance changes)
• demand proxies (booking activity, manufacturing cycles, retailer inventory positioning)
• disruption indicators (congestion, weather, labor risk, conflict-driven reroutes)

Then it outputs something your team can use:

• probability-weighted rate ranges for the next 2–6 weeks
• a “rate stability score” by lane
• suggested tender timing (ship now vs. wait vs. split)

The outcome isn’t perfect prediction. It’s better decisions under uncertainty.

2) Optimize routing when sailing frequency drops

When carriers blank sailings, the obvious response is “find another carrier.” The smarter response is to re-optimize the network:

• alternate load ports (e.g., balancing among regional origin gateways)
• alternate discharge ports (West Coast vs. East Coast via different service patterns)
• controlled transshipment vs. direct services
• planned transload strategies (port-adjacent vs. inland)

AI route optimization helps because it can weigh multiple constraints at once:

• total landed cost (including demurrage/detention risk)
• ETA reliability and buffer time
• downstream mode availability (rail/truck capacity)
• customer service-level targets

A simple but high-impact output is a ranked list of 3–5 routings per SKU family with cost, ETA, and risk scores. That turns a scramble into a playbook.

3) Turn contract/spot allocation into a living model

Static allocations break in markets like this. AI can help maintain a dynamic allocation policy that updates weekly using:

• carrier on-time performance by string
• rolling frequency by lane
• realized accessorial costs
• spot-contract spread and its volatility

Instead of “60% contract because that’s our policy,” you get:

• “70% contract on this lane because rolling risk is high and accessorials are spiking”
• “40% contract on that lane because service is stable and spot is consistently cheaper”

That’s intelligent logistics network management in practice.

Snippet-worthy truth: A cheap ocean rate isn’t cheap if it increases the probability of a missed delivery window.

A shipper’s playbook for January–February 2026 planning

Answer first: you need two plans—one for a demand pause and one for a demand surge—and your routing and allocation rules should already be approved.

Here’s what works when markets are this jumpy:

1. Build a lane-level volatility map. Track weekly rate changes, blank sailing counts, rolling incidents, and port dwell. Treat volatility as a KPI.
2. Pre-approve routing alternates. Don’t wait for a sailing cancellation to debate which port pair is allowed.
3. Create an “if-then” tariff response plan. If duties fall, do you surge shipments or hold? If duties rise, do you front-load? Decide now.
4. Segment shipments by urgency. Not everything needs the fastest or most reliable service. Assign service tiers (A/B/C) and route accordingly.
5. Measure accessorials as part of the rate. Demurrage, detention, chassis splits, and last-minute storage can erase the “win” from a lower base rate.

If you only do one thing: stop treating ocean freight as a single decision at booking time. It’s a chain of decisions—forecasting, allocation, routing, and exception management.

The practical takeaway for logistics leaders

Trans-Pacific carriers are trying to lift rates and control capacity, but the underlying reality—overcapacity plus unpredictable demand—keeps producing that sawtooth pattern. Asia–Europe is offering a different signal: rate increases hold when demand timing and lead-time risk push shippers to move earlier.

This is why AI belongs in transportation and logistics operations, not just analytics: it helps you anticipate rate swings, adapt routing when sailings are cut, and keep capacity plans aligned with real-world risk.

If your team had a credible forecast range for the next six weeks on your top lanes—and a pre-approved routing and allocation response—would you negotiate differently in January? And would your customer ETAs look more confident?