A year into Trump tariffs, Chinese factories and ports are buzzing with activity

A year after U.S. President Donald Trump’s tariffs spooked exporters and customers, Chinese factories and ports are buzzing with activity ahead of the Lunar New Year — even pushing freight rates higher.

Chinese factory activity typically surges at the start of the year with manufacturers racing to fulfil orders and ship out goods before the country enters an extended holiday for the Chinese New Year. This year’s pre-holiday rush appears as busy as ever despite Trump tariffs.

Renaud Anjoran, founder and CEO of Agilian Technology, a Guangdong-based electronics manufacturer, said his factory was operating at nearly full capacity after a year of stop-start tariff threats: “We are very busy.”

“It’s back to the situation where it’s like tariffs don’t exist. American customers are not thinking of [buying from] other places,” Anjoran said, adding that some clients had to pay additional costs to have goods made and shipped out before the holiday.

His plant in the city of Dongguan ships more than half its products to the U.S., maintaining exports at levels seen before Trump’s imposition of tariffs last year.

“Factories saw orders, production and earnings jump ahead of the Chinese New Year holidays,” according to China Beige Book that tracks economic data from the world’s second largest economy.

The research firm estimates that in January, industrial output jumped compared to a year ago, with both domestic and export orders “accelerating sharply on-year and on-month.” The official reading on output for January and February will be out in March.

Major ports in China handled 40% more containers during the week ended Feb. 1 from a year earlier, according to a team of transport and logistics analysts at HSBC Bank. That marks the fastest year-on-year growth in more than 12 months and well above the average weekly growth of about 10% in 2025.

Take the ports in Ningbo, one of China’s most critical maritime hubs: Terminals operated “beyond capacity, with individual vessels overbooked by more than 20%, and container gate-in has been suspended,” said Jay Guo, dean at Ningbo China Institute for Supply Chain Innovation.

Severe traffic congestion has pushed trucking rates up by 80%, Guo said, noting that many factories and freight forwarders will halt operations from Friday and resume next Thursday.

“CNY-focused advisories for shippers in Europe, North America, and Asia report a clear pre-holiday pull-forward of bookings from China,” said Wolfgang Lehmacher, a global supply chain and logistics expert.

That said, the spike was also in part thanks to the low-base effects from the timing of the Lunar New Year, which is in mid-February this year, versus late January in 2025.

The surge in activity, driven by pre-holiday front-loading, has pushed up freight prices. The Shanghai Containerized Freight Index, a key benchmark for container freight rates from Shanghai to major global destinations, was floating in the range of 1,400 to 1,656, in early January compared with the average level over the past 15 years of 1,337 to 1,568, according to HSBC’s freight monitor report released Monday.

Rates hit a peak three weeks earlier than the historical pattern suggests, signaling the pre-holiday front-loading being pulled forward this year, HSBC analysts said in its note.

Large container shipments to the U.S. were running above levels during the same period in 2024 and 2025 for most part of January and into February, the HSBC freight report showed.

Air freight rates for lanes to the U.S. and Europe were higher than a year earlier. The Baltic Exchange’s Shanghai Pudong outbound index was up 5.3% during the week ended Feb. 2 from the previous week.

Companies are also moving ahead with developing new products as tariff tensions have ebbed. Following a high-level meeting in October, China secured a one-year trade truce with Washington that kept tariffs on its goods to the U.S. at a lower level.

For most part of 2025, China had reduced its direct shipments to America while ramping up exports to alternative markets including Southeast Asia and European countries.

The buzz in Chinese factories comes despite companies looking to diversify their supply chains. Many multinational firms are accelerating the “China-plus-one” sourcing strategies in Southeast Asia and near-shoring in markets such as Mexico and parts of Europe, but they continue to maintain significant production or sourcing in China, said Lehmacher.

Not surprisingly, factory floors in China have been bustling with customers visiting from around the world as they place orders for the next production cycle, Cameron Johnson, a Shanghai-based senior partner at business consultancy Tidalwave Solutions, told CNBC after visiting several factories across southern China last month.

Automotive, consumer and sporting goods manufacturers in southern China, were “fairly busy,” Johnson said, as they work through backlogs and field inquiries from foreign buyers, including some from the U.S.

The visits follows a turbulent year owed to Trump’s sweeping tariffs that led to a wave of panic buying and sudden freezes as companies struggled with trade uncertainty, playing a stop-and-go game with orders.

Business owners “waited as long as they can for the uncertainty to stop but now they have to figure out how to move forward,” Johnson said.

Interests from American customers about developing new products has recovered significantly since then, said Anjoran. “A lot of people had new products in mind but froze the projects because of the uncertainty,” he said. “Now it seems things are relatively stable.”

— CNBC’s Evelyn Cheng contributed to the report.