Thursday morning, the Bureau of Economic Analysis shared that imports to the U.S. rose about 6% in July. Some of that was likely because importers were trying to load up on goods before many of the President’s tariffs took effect in August.

But other more recent data suggests that imports have been slowing down. Case in point? Shipping costs.

Container rates have been falling for 12 weeks straight according to the Drewry World Container Index. 

One reason shipping costs are down is because there are just a lot of ships out there floating around.

Simon Heaney with Drewry Shipping Consultants said a couple years ago, when attacks in the Red Sea clogged up shipping routes, shipping companies ordered new vessels to add more capacity.

“We’re getting a steady flow of new ships, at a time when demand growth is slower,” Heaney said.

Demand for shipping is slowing because importers aren’t bringing in as many products from overseas.

“Because of the tariff story,” Heaney said. “A lot of cargo was brought forward to beat the deadlines. Once those warehouses are full, your ordering slows up.”  

And that sluggish demand has been showing up in other parts of supply chains.

“We’re seeing, because of the slowdown in imports in August, a real softening of the upstream freight market,” said Zac Rogers, a professor of supply chain management at Colorado State University.

Rogers said prices have been falling for many of the transportation services that are connected to ports.

“So, this is long-haul, over-the-road trucks. It’s also rail,” Rogers said

And that’s a sign that imports are going to stay weak through at least the end of the year.

“Because essentially what it looks like is that most of the stuff that retailers are going to need for the holiday season, is already in the United States,” Rogers said.

But the slowdown in shipping costs isn’t only a sign that importers have already purchased the goods they need.

“That could be reflective of the fact that they’re anticipating that their buyers are going to have a lot less demand going into the rest of the year,” said Meagan Schoenberger, senior economist with KPMG.

She said consumers have already been pulling back this year.

“We’ve seen that in the GDP, that in the first half, there was a pretty large slowdown from the second half of last year,” Schoenberger said.

And Schoenberger noted there are plenty of signs that consumer spending will keep slowing down this quarter. And maybe into the next.

“It’s not as if the consumers are flashing red, but there are some metrics that are flashing yellow,” Schoenberger said. “Consumers are pushing back against price hikes. There are particular signs of stress in low-income households, and that’s sort of starting to creep up into the middle-income households as well.”

Schoenberger said that slowdown will continue once the cost of tariffs pushes consumer prices even higher.