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HUZHOU, CHINA – JANUARY 27: An employee of Leyuan Health Technology (Huzhou) Co., Ltd. in Huzhou, Zhejiang Province, China, works on a beverage production line to meet the Spring Festival market demand on January 27, 2026.
Wang Shucheng|Visual China Group|Getty Images
A year after U.S. President Donald Trump’s tariffs spooked exporters and customers, China’s factories and ports were bustling with activity ahead of the Lunar New Year, even pushing up freight rates.
Factory activity in China typically surges at the beginning of the year, as manufacturers race to fill orders and ship goods before China enters the Lunar New Year holiday. Despite Trump’s tariffs, this year’s pre-holiday rush appears to be as busy as ever.
Renaud Anjoran, founder and CEO of Guangdong electronics manufacturer Aigilian Technology Co., said his factory was operating at almost full capacity after a year of threats of shutdown tariffs: “We are very busy.”
“It’s back to a situation where the tariffs weren’t there. U.S. customers wouldn’t consider buying from anywhere else,” Anjoran said, adding that some customers had to pay extra to have their goods manufactured and shipped before the holidays.
His factory in the city of Dongguan ships more than half of its products to the United States, keeping exports at levels before Trump imposed tariffs last year.
“Factory orders, output and earnings surged ahead of China’s Lunar New Year holiday,” said China’s Beige Book, which tracks economic data from the world’s second-largest economy.
The research firm estimated that industrial output jumped in January from a year earlier, with domestic and export orders accelerating “significantly year-on-year and month-on-month.” Official data on January and February output will be released in March.
HSBC’s team of transport and logistics analysts said container throughput at China’s major ports increased 40% in the week ended February 1 compared with the same period last year. That marked the fastest year-over-year growth in more than 12 months and was well above the average weekly growth rate of about 10% in 2025.
Take the port of Ningbo, one of China’s most important maritime hubs, as an example: Guo Jie, director of the Ningbo China Supply Chain Innovation Research Institute, said that the terminal is “overloaded, with a single ship overbooked by more than 20%, and container entry into the port has been suspended.”
On December 9, 2025, a driverless truck transported containers at the Dapukou Container Terminal in Zhoushan Port, Ningbo, Zhejiang, China.
Noor Photos | Noor Photos | Getty Images
Rising transportation costs
Severe traffic jams have pushed trucking rates up 80%, Guo said, noting that many factories and freight forwarders will cease operations starting Friday and resume operations next Thursday.
“Shippers in Europe, North America and Asia have reported Spring Festival-focused advisories that pre-holiday orders from China are significantly ahead of schedule,” said global supply chain and logistics expert Wolfgang Lehmacher.
That said, this surge is also due in part to the impact of a low base due to the timing of the Lunar New Year (mid-February this year) compared to the end of January 2025.
A surge in activity driven by early loading ahead of the holidays has pushed up freight prices. The Shanghai Container Rate Index, a key benchmark for container rates from Shanghai to major global destinations, floated in a range of 1,400 to 1,656 in early January, compared with an average of 1,337 to 1,568 over the past 15 years, according to an HSBC Freight Monitor report released on Monday.
Analysts at HSBC said in a report that interest rates peaked three weeks earlier than historical models suggest, suggesting that pre-holiday front-loading will be brought forward this year.
The HSBC Freight report showed that large container freight volumes to the United States were higher than the same period in 2024 and 2025 for much of January and February.
Air freight prices on routes to the United States and Europe are higher than this time last year. In the week ending February 2, the Baltic Exchange Shanghai Pudong Outbound Index rose 5.3% from the previous week.
As tariff tensions ease, companies continue to develop new products. follow one October high-level meetingChina reached a one-year trade truce with Washington, keeping tariffs on its goods exported to the United States low.
For much of 2025, China Reduce direct shipments to the United States while increasing exports to other markets such as Southeast Asia and European countries.
De-risk, not decouple
Even as companies look to diversify their supply chains, the interest in Chinese factories remains unabated. Lemacher said that many multinational companies are accelerating their “China plus one” sourcing strategy in markets such as Southeast Asia and Mexico and parts of Europe, but they continue to maintain large quantities of production or procurement in China.
Not surprisingly, factory floors in China are packed with customers from around the world placing orders for the next production cycle, said Cameron Johnson, the company’s senior partner in Shanghai. Consulting firm Tidalwave Solutions told CNBC after visiting several factories in southern China last month.
Johnson said auto, consumer goods and sporting goods manufacturers in southern China were “pretty busy” as they dealt with a backlog of orders and on-the-ground inquiries from foreign buyers, including some from the United States.
They waited as long as possible for the uncertainty to stop, but now they have to figure out how to move forward.
Cameron Johnson
Senior Partner, Tidal Wave Solutions
Trump’s sweeping tariffs have capped a tumultuous year, leading to a wave of panic buying and sudden freezes as businesses struggled with trade uncertainty and played a stop-start game with orders.
Business owners have “waited as long as possible for the uncertainty to stop, but now they have to figure out how to move forward,” Johnson said.
Since then, U.S. customer interest in developing new products has revived significantly, Anjoran said. “A lot of people have ideas for new products but freeze projects because of the uncertainty,” he said. “The situation appears to be relatively stable now.”
—CNBC’s Evelyn Cheng contributed to this report.
