Six weeks is a long time in this market. Our August update covered a Gulf crisis rerouting traffic around the Cape and an early peak season expected to ease into a normal autumn. Both situations have moved, and neither moved the direction the August read implied.
Ocean rates: climbing on the transpacific, falling into Europe
The two major trade directions have diverged sharply since August. Xeneta's most recent weekly reading, as of 17 September, put Far East to US West Coast at $7,960 per FEU and Far East to US East Coast at $11,259, both up more than 320 percent from the pre-crisis baseline in late February, with the East Coast figure sitting within 11 percent of its all-time COVID-era high. Freightos and Drewry both confirm the transpacific is still rising week over week rather than settling, with added US East Coast capacity, up 6 to 7 percent in September versus August, not yet capping the increases.
Asia to Europe and Asia to the Mediterranean are moving the opposite way, down sharply from a July and August peak as Red Sea capacity returns to those routes: Mediterranean rates were off 37 percent and North Europe off 23 percent from their 2026 highs as of early September. This is not a single global rate story right now. It is two different markets moving in opposite directions at the same time.
The Gulf situation has escalated, not stabilised
Our August coverage described Hormuz transits collapsing under the Israel-Iran-US conflict, with traffic already down to roughly 5 vessels a day from over 100 pre-war. That has not eased. In the past two weeks, the United States and Iran have exchanged direct strikes, with Washington targeting Iranian oil tankers and Iran striking tankers and firing a missile toward a US warship near the strait. Crude oil topped $100 a barrel in mid-September for the first time since May, and tanker freight has hit fresh records, with a VLCC charter from the US Gulf Coast to China reported near $44.8 million and Middle East to China supertanker earnings hitting roughly $760,000 a day.
The single most significant new development: Saudi Arabia shut down its East-West crude pipeline, its main overland bypass around Hormuz with capacity of up to 5 million barrels a day to the Red Sea, after a drone strike in mid-September. The International Energy Agency described the resulting drop in Saudi crude supply as its lowest level in three decades. This removes the one major alternative route that had been absorbing some of the pressure Hormuz's collapse created, at exactly the moment tensions peaked.
The Red Sea recovered, then the ground underneath it shifted
Separately from Hormuz, Red Sea and Suez transit has been recovering. Sea-Intelligence put overall normalisation at roughly 27 percent as of September, with the pattern uneven: Europe to Asia backhaul traffic through Suez has jumped from the high teens to as much as 47 percent in a month, while Asia to Europe headhaul traffic remains largely on the Cape route. Weekly Suez transits are running around 290 ships, still well below pre-2023 levels but meaningfully above 2025.
Then, in the same ten-day window as the pipeline shutdown and the direct US-Iran exchange, the Houthis completed a takeover of the Yemeni side of the Bab el-Mandeb strait, seizing the port of Mokha and Perim Island after a week-long offensive. A Houthi official has publicly stated the group poses no danger to shipping and that freedom of navigation remains safe. Whether that holds is not something this update can verify, and it is precisely the kind of claim carriers will be weighing rather than accepting. The practical result is that the actor controlling the strait's territory changed hands at the same time transit volumes were recovering, which makes the route more consequential to watch, not less, compared with six weeks ago.
New disruptions since August: typhoons and European port labour action
Two things not in our August coverage at all are now live factors. China's ports have been hit by a third consecutive typhoon closure in three months, with Typhoon Saudel forcing suspensions at Shanghai and Ningbo and berth waits reported at one to two weeks in severe cases, with knock-on delays reaching Shenzhen and Hong Kong. Separately, German and Dutch port workers ran strikes in early September, warning actions at major German ports over a wage dispute and a nationwide Dutch action including Rotterdam over social security cuts. Market commentary attributes roughly 5 percent of global deep-sea container capacity to delay or congestion as a result of the combined pressure from typhoons, strikes and the Panama Canal restrictions covered below.
The Panama Canal itself has tightened further rather than easing: daily transit slots were cut from an average of 36 to 32 from mid-September, a reduction the canal authority says will hold until further notice, driven by forecast El Niño-related rainfall shortfalls. Non-booked vessels are reportedly waiting an average of 8 to 9 days for a slot.
Peak season: the forecaster who called it over was wrong
We cover this in full in a dedicated piece, how peak season 2026 actually played out, but the short version belongs here too: the National Retail Federation's own Global Port Tracker, which had called the early peak season winding down as of early August, reversed itself by early September, now projecting September as the single busiest import month of the year, up nearly 10 percent year over year, driven partly by cargo delayed out of earlier months by the same typhoon and canal disruptions covered above. Rate data backs the reversal: both major transpacific indices were still climbing, not falling, through mid-September.
Air cargo: steady growth, easing pace
Global air cargo demand rose 6 percent year over year in August with average spot rates up 24 percent, though the pace of rate growth has slowed for three consecutive months, from a 41 percent year-over-year peak in May down to the current reading. Hong Kong and Shanghai outbound lanes remain the strongest, both up roughly 18 to 20 percent year over year, while a genuine structural shift is visible underneath the headline number: China's low-value e-commerce air exports fell 11 percent year over year in July, with demand increasingly driven by AI hardware and data-centre component shipments out of Southeast Asia rather than the e-commerce volumes that dominated the narrative through 2025.
Fuel costs have moved with the Gulf crisis
Singapore VLSFO bunker fuel was priced at $836 per metric tonne as of early September, a sharp rise from the roughly $440 to $500 range most 2026 forecasts had projected before the crisis began, and freight analysts describe bunker costs broadly as running 60 percent above pre-war levels, tracking the same crude price spike driving the tanker market. Expect this to show up in fuel surcharge lines on invoices issued from this point rather than a delayed pass-through.
What to watch through the rest of the year
- Whether the Houthi takeover of Bab el-Mandeb changes carrier routing decisions, given the recovery in Red Sea transit was already underway before the territorial change.
- Whether Saudi Arabia's pipeline shutdown is resolved or becomes a durable feature of Gulf capacity, removing what had been the main overland alternative to Hormuz.
- Whether the September import surge genuinely represents delayed, not new, demand, which would imply a sharper drop into Q4 once the backlog clears rather than a sustained high.
- The outcome of the US-China Section 301 vessel fee decision, covered in our dedicated piece on that story, with a Trump-Xi summit days away as this is published.
None of these situations is settled, and several are moving faster than a six-week update cycle can fully capture. Our guides to how freight rates are calculated and freight surcharges decoded cover the mechanics behind how disruptions like these actually reach an invoice.
A forwarder tracking these conditions in real time is worth more right now than a rate quoted from a month-old market read. You can search more than 29,300 logistics companies by country and service in the CargoLinked directory, or post your shipment and let forwarders come to you.
Market conditions in this update are current as of the dates stated for each figure and are moving quickly. Confirm current rates and routing directly with your forwarder or carrier before making a booking decision.
