Last week’s Trump-Xi meeting in Washington yielded a two month extension of last year’s US-China trade truce which was set to expire on November 10th, mutual tariff reductions on some imports, and plans for two more meetings between the leaders before the end of the year. This deescalation likely also postpones US port call fees on China-linked vessels, though the USTR has not issued an official deferral just yet. The US Treasury Secretary said the US only agreed to two months because China still needs to fulfill some of its earlier commitments to purchase US agricultural goods. This stance may imply expectations for another extension once progress is made on those purchases. The sides will reduce tariffs on $30B worth of counterpart imports to most-favored-nation levels, pending the necessary legal procedures to put these changes into effect. Though the reduction is modest in the context of the more than $400B of total China-US trade, this news will be welcomed by US importers and consumers of the nearly 80 affected product entries, with toys as the largest category by value. China’s list of more than 1,600 entries comprises mostly agricultural products and commodities. Transpacific container rates ticked up to the West Coast last week to $8,400/FEU, a new high for the year, with East Coast prices level at about $9,600/FEU, $200/FEU lower than its peak in late August, as resilient demand has kept pressure on rates to close the month. Demand is likely to cool as we get past Golden Week and peak season finally ends, but carriers have increased blanked sailings over the holiday period and into late October. Far East congestion remains a major drain on available capacity, and likely one factor to some carriers reducing allocations for some contracted forwarders. Sea Intelligence estimates that port congestion is tying up more than 8% of global capacity, and could take up to ten months to completely unwind. We could therefore expect congestion – together with higher fue