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With shipper companies coming under intense margin pressure due to slowing demand and 18-plus-percent average US tariffs they must pay vs. 2.4% last year, the hunt is intensifying for cost savings in ocean freight, transportation, logistics and supply chains.

Tariff costs are being pushed back on suppliers, passed along to consumers or absorbed. That means retailers, consumer products companies, and other shippers must preserve margins through cost savings. But the biggest burden is on US companies that pay the tariffs, now at their highest levels since the 1930s. Data from Goldman Sachs shows that through June 2025, US companies were absorbing 64% of tariff costs, US consumers were absorbing 22%, and foreign exporters were covering the remaining 14%.

As a result, shippers are leaving no stone unturned in pursuit of cost mitigation, especially given that shippers are confronting the prospect of higher US tariff rates as a long-term reality, as recent trade deals are suggesting. Seventy-eight percent of CEOs based on a survey are implementing cost-cutting measures to safeguard performance, Gartner said on its Aug. 5 earnings call.

A core theme of TPM26 is helping shippers address this challenge, by uncovering opportunities to drive down costs while avoiding the temptation to over-reach and leave their supply chain overly exposed to risk.

At a basic level, especially for shippers with long-time service providers, it is critical to be plugged into the market to ensure knowledge of, and access to, competitive rate levels. This includes knowing how to carry out competitive bids to create transparency and ensure alignment with market rates.

Shippers are exploring other ways to deliver on mandated cost reduction targets. That's resulting in a range of tactical and long-term actions including re-shoring of sourcing, attempts to push costs onto suppliers, ensure accurate billing, drive down detention and demurrage costs, and negotiate smartly with carriers and forwarders.

But the biggest prize — one that comes with risk — is driving down core freight rates. In an environment of overcapacity and robust competition by carriers and forwarders for shippers’ cargo, the temptation will be there to go for the lowest possible rate.

But this could result in over-reaching by accepting rate levels below the market, a not-implausible scenario with signs of overcapacity becoming increasingly apparent (JP Morgan on Aug. 11 warned of “steep losses” at Maersk being “unavoidable” in 2026-2027 due to overcapacity).

Risk of too-low rates can take the form of direct carrier contracts that carriers may not fully honor in a tight market or forwarder contracts where the forwarder’s cargo is left behind due to its own non-competitive rates.

Either scenario could shut shippers out from vessel capacity — and thus facing unexpected delays and business disruption — if and when the market tightens next year. Despite overcapacity as a growing theme, surprise turns in the market can’t be ruled out. They are part of a new normal where turmoil affecting container supply chains is constant, whether resulting from geopolitics, climate change, port congestion or other issues that can materialize rapidly and over which shippers have no control.

The good news is that opportunities exist for shippers to reduce costs in ways that, for the most part, have not been tapped. Drilling deeper into supply chain operations can uncover new opportunities, for example by aligning cost-saving goals and metrics among functional units within the broader supply chain — goals that today may be at odds with each other. This will be a key topic of discussion at TPM26.

The TPM26 program, in short, will reflect shippers’ top priorities in 2026, including taking out cost while avoiding the imposition of unnecessary risk in supply chains, which in the ocean environment means ensuring access to space during unexpectedly tight markets.

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Conference dates: March 1-4, 2026