Using real-time data to navigate today’s volatile tariff landscape

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FreightWaves Staff

Wed, Apr 2, 2025, 7:58 AM 4 min read

The Trump administration’s tariffs – and our trading partners’ assorted responses to them – person sent shockwaves done planetary proviso chains, driving volatility and spreading uncertainty for freight marketplace participants. As tariffs reshape commercialized flows and interaction everything from trucking capableness to water freight rates, proviso concatenation professionals are grappling with a rapidly changing scenery that demands agility and data-driven determination making.

“The velocity and unpredictability of caller tariff actions person caught galore successful the manufacture disconnected guard,” says Craig Fuller, laminitis and CEO of SONAR. “Companies are scrambling to accommodate their proviso chains and procurement strategies, often with constricted visibility into however marketplace conditions are shifting.”

This is wherever high-frequency freight information becomes an invaluable asset. Platforms similar SONAR that supply real-time insights into freight marketplace dynamics let carriers, shippers and brokers to observe changing conditions arsenic they unfold and to respond swiftly.

For carriers, granular information connected tender rejection rates, spot rates and measurement crossed lanes enables much strategical capableness deployment and pricing. Shippers tin leverage this quality to unafraid capableness and favorable rates earlier wider marketplace consciousness drives up costs. Meanwhile, brokers summation a competitory borderline done enhanced marketplace visibility that helps them link proviso and request much efficiently.

The impacts of tariffs are already evident successful SONAR data:

Canadian trucking capableness has tightened significantly, with outbound tender rejection rates spiking from 4.8% successful January to 10.1% presently arsenic shippers unreserved to determination freight up of imaginable tariffs.

U.S. flatbed rejection rates person much than doubled from 10% to 24% successful caller weeks, driven mostly by efforts to transport Canadian lumber earlier tariffs instrumentality effect.

Ocean spot rates from China to the U.S. person plummeted to 52-week lows, down 59% to the West Coast and 45% to the East Coast since the commencement of the year, adjacent arsenic water instrumentality bookings into the U.S. are elevated owed to retailers pulling inventory forward.

Air cargo rates are nearing aboriginal 2020 levels arsenic argumentation shifts similar the closing of the de minimis loophole endanger to interaction low-value shipments.

“What we’re seeing successful the information is simply a unreserved to propulsion guardant inventory and a reevaluation of sourcing strategies,” notes Zach Strickland, SONAR’s manager of freight marketplace intelligence. “Companies are moving rapidly to mitigate tariff impacts, which is creating important volatility successful freight flows and rates crossed modes.”

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