BEIJING (Reuters) - Exporters this week jostled to load and ship cargo from Shenzhen's Yantian Port, one of the world's largest container ports, before an eight-day Lunar New Year holiday and ahead of a potential wave of U.S. tariffs on Chinese goods.
Yantian, which handles one-third of Guangdong's international trade and one-quarter of China's exports to the United States, already increased the daily quota on containers by 15% to 15,000 units during Jan. 20-28, the port said in a statement on Wednesday.
It took Li Guoliang, a truck driver, two hours on Thursday evening to transport a loaded container to a container yard at the port - quadrupling the time he spends on normal days.
"The major reason is that factories rushed to ship before the holiday, and limited container quota at the port and space at container yards resulted in the congestion," Li told Reuters.
Another truck company told Reuters that a driver was stuck in the port area for more than 24 hours on Thursday.
U.S. President Donald Trump said on Tuesday that his administration was discussing a 10% punitive duty on Chinese imports, with Feb. 1 a potential deadline for a decision, which could hurt U.S. demand for Chinese products.
The Chinese commerce ministry said on Thursday that China was willing to work with the United States to promote stable and healthy development of economic and trade ties, when asked about Trump's threat of fresh tariffs.
Chinese factories and U.S. buyers had taken action long before Trump took office earlier this week.
Some U.S. companies had frontloaded shipments of toys, furniture and electronics, and built up inventories ahead of any new Trump tariffs, driving China's exports to the U.S. in December.
In 2024, container throughput at Yantian grew nearly 7% year-on-year to a record 17.365 million standard containers. That was in line with the 14.6% jump in Shenzhen's exports last year to a new all-time high of 2.81 trillion yuan.
As the congestion at Yantian Port worsened this week, trucking fees rose, denting exporters' bottom line.
Trucking fees from Shenzhen's Fuyong, a logistics hub, to Yantian Port rose to more than 2,500 yuan ($345) from 1,000 yuan prior.
Due to congestion at Yantian, there may also be an additional container drop-off fee of more than 1,000 yuan.
Li said Trump's tariff threat was to be blamed for the congestion.
"If there is no relation, why wouldn't the factories ship the goods after the LNY holidays?"
($1 = 7.2551 Chinese yuan renminbi)