The container shipping industry faces real risks from war, but none of them come close to matching the disruption of the pandemic era. That was the message from an analyst speaking at TPM26, the annual conference held in Long Beach, where the industry gathers each March to take stock of contract negotiations and market conditions.

The framing matters. Since 2020, every new crisis in the container trade has been measured against the pandemic benchmark: blank sailings, port congestion, and freight rates that climbed to record highs before collapsing. The TPM26 analyst explicitly rejected that comparison this time. War is a problem. It is not pandemic-scale.

Why the distinction matters for shippers

For shippers and forwarders, the difference is commercial. Pandemic-scale disruption meant capacity vanished, spot rates spiked, and service contracts were torn up or renegotiated at multiples of agreed levels. A problem short of that scale suggests carriers and cargo interests can manage the fallout through the normal toolkit: rerouting, schedule adjustments, and rate mechanisms already written into service contracts.

That is a materially different planning environment. It implies shippers negotiating at TPM26, in the midst of the annual trans-Pacific contracting season, do not need to price in a repeat of the extreme volatility that defined the early 2020s. It also implies carriers should not expect the windfall conditions that war-fueled panic speculation sometimes anticipates.

What the analyst did and did not say

The claim was measured on both ends. War was not dismissed as a non-event; it was acknowledged as a genuine problem for container shipping. The analyst's point was one of magnitude. The industry has absorbed shocks before, and the current conflict-driven risks, while real, sit well below the threshold of the pandemic's systemic breakdown.

The TPM26 context

TPM is the container industry's flagship conference, staged annually by S&P Global's Journal of Commerce ahead of the trans-Pacific contracting round. Ratings of risk, capacity, and rate direction delivered from the TPM stage routinely color how carriers and beneficial cargo owners approach the negotiating table in the weeks that follow.

A measured risk assessment this year signals neither complacency nor alarm. War remains a live variable in network planning. But absent a further escalation, the analyst's read at TPM26 points to a market coping with geopolitical stress rather than reliving the pandemic's supply chain rupture — and that balance, unless conflict conditions worsen, is likely to hold through the contracting season.