Container spot rates from China to the U.S. East Coast hit $11,523 per 40-foot equivalent unit this month — up 335% since Feb. 28 — and Xeneta says the market has now reached its post-Hormuz crisis peak, but the benchmarking platform warns shippers to budget for elevated costs through the rest of 2026.

West Coast-bound boxes average $8,346 per FEU, a 344% rise over the same period, according to Xeneta data released Friday. The coast-to-coast spread has widened to $3,177 per FEU, from just $772 before the crisis.

"We can say with a level of confidence that the market has reached its post-Hormuz crisis peak in 2026," Peter Sand, chief analyst at Xeneta, said in a weekly update Friday. "Demand is not strong and rates have now peaked, but they will not collapse, so shippers should expect to pay elevated freight costs for the remainder of the year."

Where do rates go from here?

Sand expects the spread to narrow as rates decline, with the East Coast falling harder from its elevated starting point. Rolling forward three months, he projects spot rates into the East Coast in the range of $6,000–$7,000 per FEU, and West Coast rates around $4,500–$5,500.

For apparel and softgoods importers locked into East Coast routings through Gulf-adjacent corridors, that still means landed-cost pressure well above pre-crisis baselines heading into peak-season replenishment.

What is happening in the Strait itself?

Rate pressure is most acute for cargo actually transiting the Persian Gulf. The UAE's National Association of Freight and Logistics says the total cost of moving cargo into the Gulf runs three to five times pre-war levels, driven by accumulated surcharges, rerouting and land-transport costs rather than base ocean rates. Those costs had not subsided as of early October.

Attacks on vessels have intensified rather than eased. Strikes reached their highest weekly level since the war began, with at least 12 hits on oil, LNG and LPG tankers in the week of Sept. 28 to Oct. 5, per three maritime security sources cited by Reuters. The International Maritime Organization separately verified nine incidents that week, against a previous high of eight in the week of July 13.

The latest strike came Tuesday, when an unknown projectile hit the Panama-flagged tanker On Peace, injuring 12 crew members, according to India's foreign ministry. Two tankers were struck Sunday — an inbound LPG carrier and the product tanker Lipsi — and the IRGC ordered a tanker near Oman to turn back Monday, per the U.K. Maritime Trade Operations.

The U.S. Navy-led Joint Maritime Information Center said Sunday the IRGC still shows intent to assert presence "along key transit lanes" through drone overflights and surveillance.

Vessel transits remain a fraction of normal. Windward counted 11 tanker and cargo crossings in the 24 hours ending Tuesday — three inbound, eight outbound — against a pre-war norm of about 125 vessels a day.

Is the oil still flowing?

Oil exports have largely recovered, though roughly 40% of regional volumes now bypass the strait via terminals at the UAE's Port of Fujairah and ship-to-ship transfers in the Gulf of Oman. Kpler puts confirmed Hormuz clearance at 11.5 million barrels per day on a seven-day average, about a third below the 17.1 million bpd pre-war baseline, with strait transits alone averaging 9 million bpd. Counting bypass routes, the regional average reaches 21.7 million bpd, just 7% below pre-war levels.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Wednesday in Athens that Iran has "lost complete control" of the strait: "there's almost as much oil flowing out now as there was before this conflict began." Hours later, IRGC adviser General Mohammad Reza Naqdi told Fars News Agency that "the Strait of Hormuz is closed, and the armed forces of the Islamic Republic of Iran have full control over it," adding that "illegal routes" hugging Oman's coast would soon be shut.

Vice President JD Vance told Reuters Wednesday that Iran must make a "meaningful" reduction in uranium enrichment capacity — a wording analysts read as a softening from Washington's earlier demand that Tehran abandon enrichment entirely.

Brent crude traded around $101 per barrel Wednesday and WTI near $89–$90, lifted by Houthi strikes on Saudi airports but capped by recovering Gulf exports and G7 emergency stock releases.

What should sourcing teams do?

The plateau thesis cuts both ways: rates have crested, but a fall back to pre-crisis levels is not on the table this year. Sourcing teams with China–U.S. volume should lock in the projected $6,000–$7,000 East Coast and $4,500–$5,500 West Coast ranges as budget assumptions, revisit West Coast routings while the spread narrows, and treat any Gulf-bound cargo as carrying a confirmed three-to-five-times cost multiplier on pre-war levels.