A new industry report shows air freight became the instrument of choice for businesses absorbing the steepest US tariff shock since the 1930s
The International Air Transport Association (IATA) released a report on Tuesday showing that air cargo carried $157 billion worth of frontloaded United States imports in the first quarter of 2025, as businesses raced to beat a wave of tariff increases, while also transporting more than two thirds of the world’s artificial intelligence (AI) related goods by value over the course of the year.
The report, released at the 19th World Cargo Symposium (WCS) in Lima, Peru, provides the most detailed accounting yet of how air freight functioned as an economic stabiliser during one of the most turbulent years for global trade in decades. Average applied US tariff rates climbed to around 17 percent in 2025, the highest level since the 1930s, triggering a rush by importers to get goods into the country before successive rate increases took effect.
The Frontloading Surge
US imports jumped by $193 billion year on year in the first quarter of 2025, a 26 percent increase. Of that amount, $157 billion, or 82 percent, moved by air, with the value of air-carried US imports rising 81 percent compared to the same period in 2024. The scale of air cargo’s dominance in that surge was striking: ocean freight, rail, and road collectively accounted for just 18 percent of the import increase during the period.
The report also documents what happened after the initial frontloading wave subsided. Between April and December 2025, companies shifted to restructuring their supply chains, redirecting goods away from tariff-exposed trade lanes and toward new markets, particularly in Europe. On trade lanes that expanded during that period, air cargo carried 82 percent of US import gains and 48 percent of European import gains. On trade lanes that contracted, air cargo’s share of the losses was far smaller, just 30 percent for the US and 3 percent for Europe, reflecting the industry’s ability to absorb demand shifts more nimbly than slower transport modes.
Full-year global air cargo demand, measured in cargo tonne-kilometres (CTK), grew 3.4 percent in 2025, and IATA expects that to stabilise at 2.6 percent in 2026, led again by Asia Pacific and Europe while North America faces continued pressure.
AI Investment Runs on Air Freight
The report’s second major finding concerns the role air cargo played in the global AI investment boom. Servers, data storage units, and memory chips, the physical infrastructure of AI data centres, are high-value, time-sensitive goods for which air transport is the natural mode. AI-related goods accounted for 53.5 percent of the total value of all air-transported trade in 2025, while representing just 7 percent of its volume, a ratio that underscores the segment’s extraordinarily high value density. Shipments of AI goods grew 20 percent year on year.
IATA’s Head of Industry Analysis Julia Seiermann said that without air cargo, the investment wave in AI infrastructure would have translated into economic activity more slowly and with greater supply-chain risk. The combined effect of frontloading support and AI goods delivery helped global trade grow 2.4 percent in 2025, well above the World Trade Organization’s (WTO) initial forecasts, while global gross domestic product (GDP) expanded 3.2 percent despite significant policy headwinds.
