By Rebecca JeffreyRebecca Jeffrey4 December 2025
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Industry analysts predict that continued tariff uncertainty will drive air cargo volatility in 2025, though actual implementation expected to be less severe
Tariffs, e-commerce and demand out of Southeast Asia will be some of the hot topics in the air cargo industry next year, with the second half of the year more prosperous.
The air cargo industry will likely have to contend with more tariff turbulence next year, but the threatened tariffs will be worse than the reality, according to Niall van de Wouw, chief airfreight officer, Xeneta.
Speaking during Flexport’s ’Air Market Predictions for 2026’ webinar, van de Wouw said it is likely there will be further tariff developments and “more volatility” but headline tariffs will be higher than the actual tariffs implemented.
He pointed out that this year, actual tariffs went up about 12%, a lot lower than the theatened tariff levels. This explains why the industry hasn’t seen inbound US demand plummet, he said.
Flexport’s vice president global head of airfreight, Alexis Boutet said that the company expected a low single-digit increase in industry demand in 2026, with slightly higher capacity, leading to downward pressure on rates, although rates are still expected to be elevated next year.
Further, he added that demand is anticipated to be higher in the second half of the year, with a strong peak lead by Asia export demand for e-commerce and AI-related data centre component shipments.
The webinar highlighted Aevean’s 2025 year to date growth data, which showed that both freighter and belly capacity has grown 5% year over year, with belly capacity in particular recovering to 2019 levels, although still lagging recent demand growth.
Maarten Wormer, head of consulting, Aevean, said that “much of the capacity” has been deployed on Asia-Europe and Asia-Middle East trade lanes to serve e-commere demand, which means there has been limited transpacific capacity growth.
Touching on the recent MD-11F incident and subsequent grounding of the fleet, Boutet stressed that while MD-11Fs are largely deployed on domestic routes and represent only a 1% capacity loss, provided they remain absent from the market, this “might be just enough to keep capacity tight in 2026”.
Aevean data showed that demand from Southeast Asia to the US has continued to grow throughout 2025. Vietnam is a key US trade partner for laptops and overtook China in March. US smartphone imports from China, Vietnam and India are now also equal in size, found Aevean.
However, Southeast Asia now faces the challenge of matching China’s infrastructure and air cargo capacity as demand continues to grow.
On the subject of demand out of Vietnam, van de Wouw said “rates will be elevated with peaks if capacity is not managed”. He added that demand and rates out of Taiwan will depend on how the semiconductor market develops.
Boutet also pointed out that it costs more to deploy freighters from Vietnam than China, so rates need to be higher as a result.
E-commerce has continued to grow, said Boutet. This year saw supply chains shift from China-US to China-Europe when the US government ended the de minimis exemption.
However, Flexport does not think the EU move to end the de minimis exemption, with temporary measures from next year, will impact the market significantly.
“We don’t think the new EU e-commerce regulation planned for November 2026 will significantly change the picture,” Flexport’s presentation stated.
In addition to this, Aevean’s research showed that US e-commerce is back to 90% of its pre de minimis trade, showing the resilience of business and strong consumer demand.