The US Trade Ledger — every US container gateway, every partner
country, every month. Census-recorded, AIS-verified.
The vanished $100 billion
magnitude · trailing 12 months vs the 12 before (2024-06 → 2026-05) · verdict: CONFIRMED — IT IS PRICE, AND IT IS CHINA
What was registered, before the data was touched
Registered 2026-08-07: the ~$103B fall in trailing-12-month declared import value (on only −3.5% weight) is driven primarily by China’s within-code invoice collapse and substitution — NOT by Americans importing less. Two kill-switches registered: if the volume effect explains the majority, the framing dies; if China’s contribution is under a third, the linkage to the invoice collapse overstates.
What the record shows
America’s containerised import bill fell $102 billion in one year — from
$894B to $791B — while the cargo itself fell just 3.5%. The country imports as much as it
ever has; by weight, 2024 and 2025 tie as the biggest years in the record. Both registered
kill-switches survived, decisively. Split the fall into volume and price:
−$30B is missing cargo; −$72B is the same cargo declaring less value. Split it
by origin and the picture sharpens to a point: China’s contribution is −$101.7B
— effectively the entire national decline — while everyone else nets to zero
(Vietnam +$13B and Thailand +$6B offsetting declines elsewhere). And China’s own fall is
−$44B lost volume plus −$57B of falling declared prices: the shrinking invoice,
priced at national scale. One number to keep: a single origin’s pricing behaviour moved
the entire US import bill by more than the GDP of most countries’ annual trade with America.
Declared customs value of containerised imports, all origins, monthly. The 2025-26 slide is the $102B.The same months by weight — near-flat. The cargo kept coming; the value did not.
China-101.7B total · -44.4B volume · -57.3B price
Vietnam+13.2B total · +11.6B volume · +1.6B price
Thailand+5.6B total · +4.3B volume · +1.4B price
India-5.5B total · -3.7B volume · -1.8B price
South Korea-5.4B total · -2.1B volume · -3.3B price
Cambodia+3.1B total · +4.4B volume · -1.3B price
Indonesia+2.6B total · +5.1B volume · -2.5B price
Contribution to the $102B change by origin, split into volume and price effects. China is the story; the rest is noise that cancels.
What would prove this wrong
Both registered tests could have killed this and did not: the price effect is 70% of the fall (volume 30%), and China is ~100% of the net origin contribution, not under a third.
Cite this
In print: “The vanished $100 billion” — a pre-registered event study
by the Trimtab US Trade Ledger, ruled 2026-08-06, from US Census port records and 174,440 vessel
stays (NOAA AIS, 2018–2024) — trimtabist.com/atlas/vanished-hundred-billion For the record: Event Atlas · vanished-hundred-billion · CONFIRMED — IT IS PRICE, AND IT IS CHINA · ruled 2026-08-06
This study is a frozen artifact: the ruling and its exhibits do not change when new
data lands. If the verdict is ever revised, the revision is printed here with its reason, and the
original stays on the record.