Xeneta: Ocean Shipping Recovery Still Distant Despite US-Iran Ceasefire as Spot Rates Climb 192%

The Analysis

The United States and Iran signed a memorandum of understanding to reopen the Strait of Hormuz. Xeneta's June 19 report says the container network will not fully recover until mid-September 2026. And the spot rate from the Far East to the US West Coast is up 192% since late February. Three sentences, three different clocks.

I start with the clocks because that is where most people get this wrong. A ceasefire is a political event. A rate sheet is a capacity event. They do not tick at the same speed, and they do not peak on the same day.

So let me do what I always do with a number like 192%. I take it apart before I believe it.

Here is what the agreement actually says, with the adjectives removed. The US and Iran signed a memorandum of understanding last week to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, the waterway between the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman. The MoU sets a 60-day window to negotiate a final deal, and it is that final deal that would include the actual reopening of the strait. On June 20, President Donald Trump said there would be no tolls in the Strait of Hormuz for 60 days during the ceasefire, and that after the 60-day period the US would only impose tolls if the deal is not completed. Xeneta also flags that the agreement calls for minesweeping operations, which may require an extended timeline — and minesweeping is the kind of work that does not respect a 60-day calendar.

Now the capacity side, which is the part I care about more than the politics. Around 10% of global container shipping capacity is still impacted by the blockade. Not one percent. Not three. Ten percent of the world's boxes sit inside a disruption that a signature does not unwind. Peter Sand, Xeneta's chief analyst, puts it plainly: even if the ceasefire holds, around 10% of global container shipping capacity is impacted by the blockade and freight rates are spiralling across major trades, and this scale of disruption and market volatility cannot be reversed overnight.

So the headline says reopened. The capacity says 10% still stuck. Both statements are true. Only one of them moves your rate, and it is the one with the percentage on it.

Let me take the number apart, because that is the job. Spot rates from the Far East to the US West Coast are up 192% from late February to June 19, per Xeneta. On the same clock, the Far East to the US East Coast is up 158%. I have a percentage for each leg and a base level for neither. That is the first thing wrong with every rates-up-192% headline you will read this week: a percentage is amplitude, not altitude. It tells you how far the rate traveled, not where it landed. If you want to know whether a West Coast box costs 4,000 or 8,000 right now, the headline does not tell you, and neither does mine. Your own February booking does.

The one clean thing a percentage lets me do is the ratio, and the ratio is where the real information is. A 192% increase means the current rate is 2.92 times the late-February rate. A 158% increase means the current rate is 2.58 times the late-February rate. So whatever you paid in late February for a West Coast box, you are now paying 2.92 of it. Whatever you paid for an East Coast box, you are paying 2.58 of it. If your February West Coast rate was 2,000 per FEU — that is your number, not mine, I am only showing the mechanism — the June equivalent is 5,840. Same box, same lane, no new service, no new speed, no new anything. Just 2.92 times. That is what a 192% print actually means.

And watch the gap between the two legs. The West Coast moved 34 percentage points harder than the East Coast. If your routing decision was ever close between landing on the West Coast and landing on the East Coast, that 34-point gap just rewrote the comparison. The lane that used to be your cheap option is not automatically your cheap option anymore. Run the numbers again before you assume the old answer still holds.

Why did this happen when it happened? Not because of the ceasefire in the first instance, and not because of the strait. Look at what shippers did. Sand is explicit: shippers front-loaded imports ahead of expected bunker fuel surcharge increases in July and fears over available capacity. Many have been told ships are full on trades out of Asia for weeks in advance. And the shippers who managed to get their boxes on board paid a premium to do so.

Read that and notice two forces pulling the same direction. There is a pull: front-loading, demand arriving early, bookings pulled forward ahead of a July surcharge date that everyone can see coming. And there is a push: capacity cut by the blockade, ships full out of Asia. When a pull and a push meet on the same lane in the same month, the rate does not drift up. It steps up. 192% is not drift. That is a step, and it has a date on it.

The other thing to see is that the July bunker surcharge date is doing more work here than the geopolitical headline. A carrier surcharge has a date on it. A ceasefire MoU has a negotiation window. One of those you can plan around; the other you can only react to. The shippers who moved in June were planning around the surcharge date. Part of the 192% is simply the cost of everyone planning around the same date at the same time.

There are two signals pointing the other way, and I want them on the table, because I do not publish one-sided rate sheets. The fuel component is already softening. Marine bunker fuel and oil prices dropped about 20% in mid-June, and Xeneta expects fuel pressure surcharges to ease as a result. That is real, and it is the first crack in the ceiling.

But here is the number I would circle. Container rates are still climbing even with the fuel decline. The June 23 Freightos update attributes the continued climb to early peak season demand driven by tariff changes, manufacturing price hikes, and the fuel-related surcharges still sitting in the base. So do not confuse the fuel line easing with the rate easing. Fuel is one line item on the invoice. Demand is the rest of the invoice. If fuel drops 20% and demand is still pulling thirty days of bookings forward, the total can still go up. I have watched people call a peak off a fuel chart and then get flattened by a demand chart.

Freightos adds one more detail worth holding onto: expected bookings may peak in June, which would mean carriers could find more resistance to July rate increases than they found to June price hikes. That is the tell. June hikes landed. July hikes might not — not because the market turned generous, but because the volume that would have paid them already sailed. When forward bookings peak before the rate does, the next rate increase is standing on thinner ground.

On the clock, here is what Xeneta is saying, precisely. Spot rates continue to rise for at least another four weeks before the market peaks. The peak is expected around the point the strait formally reopens, followed by a gradual easing. And the vessels are full until at least July.

Put those three together and you get a peak that is defined by the strait reopening, not by the ceasefire signing. Those are different events and they are weeks apart. There is an entire shipping season between the signature and the reopening, and it is a season in which the rate climbs and you pay it. If your planning treats the ceasefire as the turning point, you are early by the exact amount of that gap.

Mid-September is worth saying out loud. From late June, mid-September is roughly eleven to twelve weeks away. Against a market expected to climb at least four more weeks before it peaks, that means you are planning across a peak, a plateau, and the first two stages of a recovery. Twelve weeks is long enough that the rate decision you make this week does not only set this month's cost — it sets the base against which your autumn budget gets compared. That is why the sequence matters more than the single headline number.

Here is what the headlines leave out, and it is the part that actually decides when your lane gets better rather than when the politics gets better. Xeneta expects a three-stage recovery. Stage one is extracting the ships and crew stranded inside the Persian Gulf. Stage two is the return of feeder and regional services into Persian Gulf ports. Stage three is the major long-haul services on the Asia to North America and Europe trade lanes.

Read the order again. The transpacific long-haul lane — the one giving you your 192% — is the last one back. That means your lane is structurally the tail of the recovery, not the front of it. Everyone hears recovery and pictures their rate easing in the same week the strait opens. The sequence says otherwise. Feeder and regional services return first; the big Asia-to-North-America strings return last, and your rate lives on the last stage. This is the single most useful piece of timing in the report, and it is buried under the headline.

The second thing the coverage skips is the transshipment tail. Sand makes a point I want quoted in full: increasing use of transshipment services into the Gulf creates additional transit time, but it insulates the long-haul network from future disruption. That is a trade, not a win. You are buying resilience with days. If your plan assumes transshipment into the Gulf means no change, you have misread it. It means a longer transit and a network less likely to get knocked over twice. For some cargo that is the right trade. For perishables, or anything with a launch date, it is a cost you must count now rather than discover at destination. Note also that as the MoU was announced, transits already started moving — CMA CGM is increasing its Red Sea transits — which is the first concrete sign that the network, not the politics, is beginning to respond.

Let me give the other side of the trade honestly, because the report is not one-directional. There is a path where rates ease regardless of the strait. Xeneta itself says spot rates may start easing as demand wanes, regardless of what happens with the Strait of Hormuz, because the early busy season pulled the volume forward. If June was the booking peak, the back half of the summer is running on fumes. In that world, the fuel decline plus a demand air pocket does the job before the minesweepers finish, and the reopening becomes almost irrelevant to your invoice.

The opposite path is just as simple to describe. The de-mining runs long. The 60-day window closes with no final deal. The toll question comes back, and a toll is a line item you plan around differently from a rate, because it is regulatory and it lands on the box itself. If the deal completes inside the 60 days, that risk disappears. If it does not, every number above is a lower bound, not a forecast.

So the honest position: I cannot tell you which path we are on. I can tell you the two dates that flip the answer — the July surcharge date and the end of the 60-day negotiation window — and I can tell you to build your plan so neither one catches you flat-footed.

Let me put a number on a decision, and I will say out loud that the base is illustrative, because Xeneta gave me a percentage and not a level, and I do not invent levels. Assume, purely to show the mechanism, that your late-February spot rate on the Far East to US West Coast lane was 2,000 per FEU. A 192% increase puts the current level at 2.92 times that, so 5,840 per FEU. Assume you ship 40 FEU a month on that lane. In February, that lane cost you 80,000 a month. Now, on the same 40 FEU, it costs 233,600 a month. The monthly delta is 153,600 — from the rate line alone, before any premium you pay just to get an actual box on board, and Sand says boxes on board are being paid for at a premium precisely because capacity is short.

Those 40 FEU are the only number in that paragraph that is yours. Swap in your real volume and your real February rate and you have your own exposure. That is the whole point of a percentage: I hand you the multiplier, you bring the base. Anyone who gives you a dollar figure without telling you the base has handed you a feeling with a currency symbol on it.

Now the part that matters. What do you do this week, who owns it, and where is the line.

The single most useful thing you can do in the next seven days is find out what is already inside your July quote. Bunker surcharge increases were expected in July; fuel prices then fell about 20% in mid-June and fuel pressure surcharges are expected to ease. That gap matters. It means your July quote could be carrying a fuel surcharge that the fuel market no longer supports. Before you accept a July number, ask your carrier or forwarder to show the surcharge broken out as separate lines — base rate, BAF or fuel component, and any peak season surcharge. If the fuel component is priced off an old fuel level, that is a conversation to have, not a fait accompli to accept. Do it before you sign anything, because a surcharge you accept in July is a surcharge you argue about in August.

If you are on contract rather than spot, you are not immune, and you should check the mechanism. Contract rates can carry surcharge pass-throughs, and a fuel or peak season surcharge can move your landed cost even when the headline contract rate looks fixed. The question to ask is not what my rate is but what moves my rate without a renegotiation. In a market that printed 192% on spot, the surcharge pass-through is where a fixed contract quietly stops being fixed. Read the clause. If the fuel component is indexed to a level from before the mid-June drop, your contract is quoting you a fuel price the market already left behind.

The second thing is the lock decision, and I want to give you a trigger instead of a vibe. You do not lock a long-haul rate because rates are high. You lock because the rate is about to step again and you can still get space. Set your trigger as a multiple of your own April and May average on the lane. If the July quote comes in above 2.5 times your April-May average on the West Coast lane, and you have cargo that must sail in the next six weeks, book it rather than wait for the reopening peak. The reason is the sequence: the peak is expected around the strait reopening, the long-haul lane is the last stage back, and the fuel argument only softens one line of the invoice. Waiting for the easing means waiting through two earlier recovery stages.

On booking lead time, the report gives you one hard rule: ships full out of Asia for weeks in advance, and full at least until July. Practically, that means a two-week lead time is no longer a lead time — it is a coin flip. If your cargo has a fixed production date and a fixed customer date, book four to six weeks out and pay the premium to hold the slot, because the cost of missing the sailing is not the rate. It is the customer call you make afterward. I have seen the premium for a guaranteed box turn out to be the cheapest line on the whole P&L once the alternative was a missed launch.

Also, front-load only the cargo that was going to move in the third quarter anyway. Pulling forward demand you do not actually have just moves the problem and grows your storage line. The surcharge date is a reason to re-sequence real orders, not a reason to invent orders.

And if the West Coast versus East Coast decision was ever close for you, rerun it with the new 34-point gap. The answer that was correct in February may not survive the arithmetic in June.

If you are looking at transshipment to insulate a long-haul contract, price the extra transit time as a hard cost on the cargo that cannot absorb it, and keep transshipment for the cargo that can. The point of transshipment here is resilience, not speed, and you should buy it on those terms.

For a month-end review, do four concrete things: pick the July surcharge date and the end of the 60-day window, put both on a single calendar, break your next quote into base plus surcharges, and give one person the job of re-quoting the lane one week before each of those two dates. That is the whole action list. It does not need more.

Two traps I see every time a rate sheet runs like this. One is treating the fuel decline as the beginning of the end. Fuel dropped 20% and rates still climbed. Anyone who read the fuel line and stopped reading is now short on their budget, because the demand line kept pulling. Watch the surcharge, but price against demand.

The other is assuming full means expensive. Ships are full out of Asia until at least July, and full capacity means your booking fails before it means your rate is high. The failure mode this month is not paying too much — it is not getting a slot at all when your production date cannot move. Book earlier than you think you need to, and treat the premium for getting boxes on board as the price of schedule integrity rather than a number you can negotiate away.

One more, and it is the easy one to miss: do not confuse the political clock with the marine clock. The 60-day toll window is a negotiation deadline. The minesweeping is an operations timeline. Sand says disruption of this scale cannot be reversed overnight. The toll clock can close while the boxes are still stuck inside the Gulf, and that gap — between the politics settling and the capacity coming back — is exactly where you are exposed.

None of this is a forecast. It is a rate sheet with three clocks on it — political, fuel, and capacity — and only one of them, the capacity clock, is actually setting your price. The ceasefire gets the headlines. The 10% of capacity takes your money.

Show me where your base lands and I will tell you whether to lock. Until then, everything else is, as an invoice might put it, a matter of feeling.

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— By Vivian Zhao