Warehouse leasing was once an unremarkable function of logistics — a boring business defined by efficiency rather than strategy. Not any more. Now it is a new front in the US-China economic skirmish.
Chinese ecommerce groups and third-party logistics providers have been aggressively buying up warehouse space across the US since Donald Trump started his second term in the White House. They accounted for a fifth of net new leases in the US through the third quarter of last year, according to Prologis. In New Jersey alone, Chinese logistics groups leased 5.6mn square feet of space last year, triple that of 2023.
One driver of this expansion is changing strategies of ecommerce and logistics groups such as Shein, Temu, Alibaba’s Cainiao and JD.com. It is not just that more consumers are using their services — though that is a factor too. It is also that they are trying to get ahead of regulatory shifts that could disrupt their low-cost, high-volume business model. Reliance on Chinese imports now calls for meticulous planning — and a whole lot of warehouses.