CMA CGM’s US-Bound PSS Breaks $10,000

Starting October 1, CMA CGM will add a Peak Season Surcharge (PSS) on its Asia–U.S. services. From the Far East to U.S. base ports, the charge is US$4,000 per 40-foot container; from the Indian Subcontinent and Bangladesh to the U.S. East Coast and Gulf, it is a flat US$10,000 per box. But this is bigger than a seasonal rate hike — it marks a quiet shift in who controls ocean freight pricing, how carriers enforce capacity discipline, and where the balance of bargaining power now lies.

Why CMA CGM Can Quote US$10,000 Right Now

1. They Raise Rates When Shippers Have No Exit

Timing the increase to take effect October 1 — the busiest shipping week of the year — is no coincidence. Think of surge pricing before Chinese New Year: the underlying cost hasn’t moved; the carrier simply knows factories have no choice but to ship, so it pushes the rate up.

2. They Blank Sailings to Engineer a Capacity Squeeze

More than 200 large vessels are currently idling outside ports waiting to discharge — Shanghai alone is taking 7–10 days to berth — and roughly 11% of sailings are expected to be cancelled next month. Carriers are monetizing that congestion, turning a capacity crunch into a “peak-season” fee.

3. They Pile Surcharges Onto Rates That Are Already High

An East Coast box already runs about US$10,000 (nearly three times its level a few years ago). The PSS is just one more line stacked on top of an already expensive rate. The result: the fees shippers actually pay become increasingly opaque, and total landed cost gets harder to pin down.

Who’s Really Driving the Stacked Ocean Rates?

1. Ocean Pricing Has Shifted from a Single Rate to a Stack of Surcharges

Shippers no longer see “one price” — they face a layered structure of “base freight + PSS + GRI + bunker + THC + security + destination charges.” Each layer can be raised, waived, or back-billed on its own. Carriers have moved pricing power out of “the market” and into “the fine print.”

2. Cheap and Reliable No Longer Go Together — and “Certainty” Now Carries a Premium

Shanghai’s on-time reliability is just 21%. Carriers guarantee neither arrival times nor space, yet still add space-protection and peak-season fees. Buyers pay more and get less certainty in return. The mechanics are simple: surcharges push the uncertainty onto shippers while the carrier keeps the scarcity premium.

3. Carriers Are Pricing Golden Week’s Bottleneck to the Penny

Mid-Autumn and National Day create the second-biggest bottleneck in China’s annual manufacturing shipping calendar, and global carriers build their highest-priced weeks of the year around it. For factories, that is a hard constraint on both scheduling and quoting: either rush pre-holiday cargo at peak rates, or wait and eat the later delivery dates.

Ocean vs Air — Rate and Volume Trends, Side by Side

Whether these hikes stick, and whether customers should lock capacity now, comes down to one question: are price and volume moving together? On both ocean and air U.S. lanes, rates are elevated — but the forces behind them point in opposite directions.

On rates, ocean is climbing while air has peaked and is easing. On volume, both lanes are growing — but air is genuine demand pulling price and volume up together, whereas ocean is modest growth layered on top of withdrawn capacity, an artificial scarcity that pulls price and volume apart. Bottom line: air is backed by real demand and starting to cool; ocean is carriers blanking sailings to grab pricing power — not a market that is genuinely short of cargo.

If You Ship China Exports to the U.S., Get Three Things Straight