Exploring "frontloading" and inventories in a year of US tariffs

Why haven't Donald Trump's tariffs had a stronger effect on US growth and global trade? "Frontloading" is a common explanation. As the US president vowed to impose levies on imports, exporting nations rushed to ship goods of all kinds at the start of the year.

This burst of commerce has helped growth figures around the world -- and also implies a deeper trough is coming due to international trade "borrowed from the future."

However, US inventory data only partly support this narrative. We've compared three different sectors in our first chart: autos and auto parts, metals and minerals, and computers and electronics. The latter saw by far the biggest "frontloading" in early 2025.

But as our second chart shows, this sector also saw the steepest decline in inventory-to sales ratio as the year progressed. A low ratio usually suggests efficient inventory management: product in warehouses is being quickly sold. (This could be related to optimism that Trump's carve-out for key electronics goods would not be scrapped anytime soon; metals and motor vehicles were not exempted from tariffs.)

In the retail sector, building-supply companies showed the strongest signs of frontloading.

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