US tariff uncertainty dogs IANA conference

A number of participants at the Intermodal Association of North America (IANA) taking place at Long Beach, California have publicly and privately expressed concern about uncertainties created by the tariffs imposed by the Trump administration in 2025.

At the opening IANA 2025 panel discussion on September 16th, Lars Jensen, Principal Vespucci Maritime said the impact of President Trump’s tariffs policies was to isolate the United States from the rest of the global trade world complicating business prospects further.

Jensen said that while the rest of the world is seeing major growth in trade, the United States is seeing a decline, “I'm seeing a bifurcation of the global containerized trade. I don’t think it’s a surprise to anybody due to the US led trade war. We look at the global trade and how that has been impacted, if you look at the entire world …the container trade is booming. We're looking at the last four months, and depending on how you twist the numbers, all of this year, it looks something like 6% growth, which is around twice what you could expect. The world is doing phenomenal, except the US.” In the case of the United States, Jensen noted, “If you look at the US ever since the start of the trade war, growth, imports and exports have been declining…”

John McCown, Publisher of the McCown Report, told AJOT that he is projecting that US ports will see a 10 to 17 % decline in container volumes for the rest of 2025 as a result of the Trump tariff policies.

Jensen said the US decline in imports and exports is not likely to be short-lived. “If I look slightly further ahead to 2026 and beyond, I don’t think this is going to be a short-lived phenomenon. I have the great privilege of traveling extensively to God knows how many different countries every year. And what I've seen, I would say, especially over-the last two to three months, is a change in mindset. Initially with the trade war the question was basically ‘what on earth in the US …has changed.’ It has changed to more acceptance that ‘Fine, the US doing their own thing. So, basically every other country on the planet … is saying ‘how do we strengthen trade ties with all other countries?’ Which is why the rest of the world, I expect, would continue to show strong growth, whereas this country (the United States) is going to be severely challenged, not just now, but also in the years ahead,” Jensen explained.

Another panelist, Tim Denoyer, Vice President at ACT Research, said: “I see things the same way Lars does,” but he also sees a tightening in the trucking market giving rise to higher freight rates in 2026.

Intermodal growth Is almost flat

Larry Gross, President and Founder at Gross Transportation Consulting, said he expected growth in intermodal to rise substantially in 2025 but that has not been the case. He expressed disappointment with the growth of US intermodal business related to both international and domestic related moves. He noted that 2024 had seen a year over year rise of 8.5% but he reported that for the month of August 2025 there had been only a 1.6% year over year increase. The low level of activity can be attributed to uncertainties undermining purchases of imports and exports related to the imposition of tariffs in 2025, he said.

Union Pacific-Norfolk Southern Rail merger

Gross expressed the hope that the merger between the Union Pacific and Norfolk Southern railroads would energize the US intermodal business but conceded that the Union Pacific would need to invest in more shorter distance rail moves. That practice was made unpopular by the adoption of Precision Scheduled Railroading (PSR) practices which emphasized cost cutting and massive employee layoffs at US railroads to increase profitability.

Cargo theft

Several panelists noted that the cargo theft from trucks and railroads “had gotten out of hand.” In a subsequent panel, Donna Lemm, Chief Strategy Officer for harbor trucker IMC based in Memphis, urged that penalties for cargo theft be legislated to give the US Department of Homeland Security power to combat thefts. Lemm explained that over 90% of cargo theft attacks, IMC has seen occur on US railroads and that, at the minimum, a central incident reporting system is needed to track thefts on rail and trucking: “The problem is so unreported that it would make your head spin,” she said.

The AI factor

The issue of cargo security is getting more difficult to defend with the arrival of AI.

Maneet Singh, Chief Information Officer, Odyssey, Charlotte, North Carolina, told AJOT that Odyssey is a “complex logistics provider…So we are a well-rounded logistics solution provider for our customers. So, if somebody wants to get something from China to here we can help with the ocean, we can with the domestic drayage, all pieces of it.”

Singh said that as Chief Information Officer he is overseeing the implementation of AI at Odyssey. He cited an example in which the company upgraded old software by taking the existing code and having AI update it faster and cheaper than without AI. He argues that this process does not eliminate a job, but it redefines the job by adding new responsibilities and skills. He urges employees not to be lazy about using AI and to apply critical thinking and match the business objective to the technology.

As writing software code becomes easier, so does the ability to write programs that can hack into a company’s operations and steal proprietary information that could result in cargo theft or pose a security threat. He says that AI is making hacking and therefore the issue of cargo security much more challenging and that employees need to be mindful of not disclosing proprietary business information when sending out emails, for example. Odyssey has invested in cyber defenses to stop these disclosures by employees, but carelessness can be costly and lead to a security breach.

This problem is especially prevalent with smaller trucking companies and family-owned businesses who do not have the money and resources to invest in security and anti-hacking processes but have access to cargo information or other proprietary information.

Singh said Odyssey works with customers and its partners to help raise awareness and implement security processes that will limit cargo theft threats and reduce the possibility of security breaches.