The week ending 27 December 2025 printed 392,295 carloads and intermodal units, up 0.7 percent from the same week in 2024. Carloads were 188,673 carloads, up 2.5 percent. Intermodal volume was 203,622 containers and trailers, down 1.0 percent. For the first 52 weeks of 2025, carloads were 11,509,099, intermodal units were 14,055,601, and combined traffic was 25,564,700, each up 1.5 percent. The news page does not name an origin country. The word China does not appear on that page.
aar.org
The matching AAR traffic PDF carries the footnote Excludes U.S. operations of CPKC, CN and GMXT. The same PDF prints an average week of 221,329 carloads and 270,300 intermodal units, so the holiday week of 188,673 carloads and 203,622 containers and trailers sits below the printed average week. That week is the short-horizon volume analog. It is a level, not a year-over-year peak.
aar.org
Intermodal was a calculated 54.98 percent of combined 2025 traffic. The inputs on the PDF are 14,055,601 intermodal units and 25,564,700 combined carloads and intermodal units. That share is a mix of domestic and international boxes. It is not a China share.
aar.org
Grain, coal, chemicals, and motor vehicles and parts are carload commodities on the same table, and under this scenario they largely continue. In the week ending 27 December 2025, coal was 55,823 carloads, grain was 20,579, chemicals were 28,533, and motor vehicles and parts were 9,910. Their sum is a calculated 114,845 carloads, a calculated 60.9 percent of the week's 188,673 carloads. Year-to-date 2025 PDF totals are coal 3,029,718, grain 1,124,119, chemicals 1,698,754, and motor vehicles and parts 790,038. Their sum is 6,642,629, a calculated 57.7 percent of 11,509,099 carloads. The series does not split those carloads by destination country.
aar.orgaar.org
The China-box exposure is a port fact, not an AAR fact. The Pacific Merchant Shipping Association note dated 28 January 2026 says that between 2015 and 2025 China accounted for 60.1 percent of containerized import tonnage at Los Angeles and Long Beach in 2015, and that those shares had shriveled to 47.5 percent at the Southern California gateway by last year. The same note says China was 35.8 percent of mainland U.S. containerized import tonnage in 2015 and 26.7 percent by last year. Tonnage is not TEU, and neither figure is a share of the 14,055,601 intermodal units.
pmsaship.comaar.org
The short price analog is one week of retail diesel, not a railroad tariff and not a year-over-year peak. U.S. No. 2 diesel retail was 4.104 dollars a gallon in the week of 28 February 2022 and 4.849 dollars a gallon in the week of 7 March 2022. From those two prints, the price rose 18.2 percent. The week of 21 February 2022 was 4.055 dollars a gallon and the week of 20 June 2022 was 5.810 dollars a gallon. The accumulated diesel analog is 43.3 percent.
eia.gov
The railroad operational-technology case is CISA ICSA-25-191-10, Update C, last revised 18 September 2025. A software-defined radio can create end-of-train and head-of-train packets and issue brake control commands. CVE-2025-1727 has a CVSS v3 base score of 8.1 and a CVSS v4 base score of 7.2. Countries deployed are the United States. CISA states that no known public exploitation specifically targeting this vulnerability has been reported, and that this vulnerability is not exploitable remotely.
cisa.gov
A China trade stop removes the China-origin boxes that had been arriving for west-coast intermodal. The AAR series that would measure that loss does not exist as a country split. The week ending 31 October 2026, released 4 November 2026, printed total U.S. weekly rail traffic of 514,080 carloads and intermodal units, up 3.5 percent. Total carloads for the week ending October 31 were 233,816 carloads, up 3.0 percent. U.S. weekly intermodal volume was 280,264 containers and trailers, up 3.9 percent. The page does not name China or Taiwan, so a China share of U.S. intermodal units stays unpublished. The closest fetched gateway print is the Southern California share that had shriveled to 47.5 percent. That 47.5 percent figure is port tonnage of containerized imports at the Southern California gateway, not a count of rail units. The share of that port tonnage that then moves inland by rail is unpublished.
pmsaship.comaar.orgaar.org
The physical handoff at Los Angeles is real and still not a box count by country. The port has 122 miles of rail, including five on-dock railyards. In calendar 2025 it handled 10.2 million TEUs and about 6.7 million loaded TEUs. In 2025, U.S. seaports handled 39.8 million TEUs of international container trade, and Los Angeles had a 17 percent market share of that total. With Long Beach, the two ports handled approximately 31 percent. None of those lines names a railroad unit or a China share of rail intermodal.
portoflosangeles.org
Carload commodities that largely continue are on the weekly table beside the intermodal line. Coal rose 5,037 carloads to 55,823. Grain rose 1,099 carloads to 20,579. Motor vehicles and parts rose 1,779 carloads to 9,910. Chemicals fell 2,166 carloads to 28,533. Six of the 10 carload groups were up in that week. Railroads account for around 70 percent of U.S. coal deliveries to power plants, which is a domestic delivery role on the facts page, not an export-country split.
aar.orgaar.org
Year-to-date carload composition on the PDF, each share calculated from the commodity total divided by 11,509,099, is coal 26.3 percent from 3,029,718, chemicals 14.8 percent from 1,698,754, grain 9.8 percent from 1,124,119, and motor vehicles and parts 6.9 percent from 790,038. The four together are the calculated 57.7 percent. Petroleum and petroleum products were 538,051 year-to-date carloads and are a separate line from those four.
aar.org
The domestic break that can stop the continuing carloads is a dispatch or brake-radio failure. ICSA-25-191-10 says the end-of-train and head-of-train protocol relies on a BCH checksum, and that a software-defined radio can issue brake control commands, causing a sudden stoppage or inducing brake failure. The attack vector in the published score is adjacent, not remote, and CISA states that this vulnerability is not exploitable remotely. The measured railroad incident that was opened is separate. Railway Gazette, citing the ENISA transport threat landscape for January 2021 to October 2022, says 21 incidents targeting the railway sector were analysed, out of a total of 98 cyber attacks. One of Danish train operator DSB's ICT service providers faced an alleged DDoS attack in October 2022 that disrupted DSB operations for several hours by affecting access to a key safety-critical IT system. The printed duration is several hours. The exploitability limit is that this was an alleged DDoS on a supplier, not remote brake-command injection, and the end-of-train advisory is not exploitable remotely.
cisa.govrailwaygazette.com
TSA Security Directive 1580-21-01D, Enhancing Rail Cybersecurity, is effective 25 October 2025 through 24 October 2026. It applies to each freight railroad carrier identified in 49 CFR 1580.101 and other TSA-designated freight railroads. It requires a cybersecurity coordinator, incident reporting to CISA, an incident response plan, and a vulnerability assessment. Section II.C.2 changes the reporting timeframe from 24 to 72 hours after the owner identifies an incident. The directive defines a Critical Cyber System as information or operational technology that, if compromised, could result in operational disruption. It does not by its own text cover every one of the approximately 615 short lines.
tsa.govaar.org
Equipment exposure is a customs line, not a carload line. In 2024 the United States imported HS 8607 parts of railway or tramway locomotives or rolling stock worth 1,136,300.85 thousand US dollars, of which China was 213,474.77 thousand US dollars. That is a calculated 18.8 percent. Mexico was 206,708.28 thousand and Canada was 172,361.28 thousand. The partner table runs through Sri Lanka at 2.45 thousand US dollars and does not name Taiwan. Other Asia, nes is a separate row at 2,332.08 thousand US dollars and 152,551 kilograms, and that row is not Taiwan.
wits.worldbank.org