What will the future of global trade look like and what does that mean for shipping and ports? When thinking of the future, we often suffer from a technology bias. We think that cars will fly, that ships will be autonomous and that big data will change everything. The future of global trade could indeed be shaped by technological change and shifting global economic patterns, but might even more forcefully be determined by something highly etheric: our values.

The idea of global trade is not very popular these days; much less appealing than Trump and Bernie, it seems. Global trade stands for outsourcing and job losses; global trade needs a wall. Yet, the intellectual demise of globalisation is not only the work of the disenchanted, but also of those without disappointment: the urban hipsters, the idealists, the millennials; an emerging amount of which in emerging economies. It is this coalition of unlikely bedfellows that might bring down global trade.

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Containerships have never been bigger than today, container freight rates have never been lower, and never has so much container carrying capacity been idle. Not a trilemma, but three sides of the same coin. And after several years of calmness at the M&A front, we have new mergers among liner companies. In March 2016, the idle container ship fleet stands at 1.6 million TEU, and a shipper may pay less than 200 US$ to have his twenty foot container shipped from Shanghai to South America.

Individual carriers typically react to this situation by a) trying to reduce their costs, and b) growing their market share. From an individual company’s perspective, this often means a) investing in modern large containerships to save fuel and achieve economies of scale, and b) seeking mergers to better control the market, which is necessary to fill the new large ships.This makes sense from the individual company’s perspective,

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The Suez Canal Authorities (SCA) have just started a price war with the upcoming expanded Panama Canal. 2 months ago SCA introduced a discount to counter-act carriers going round Africa on the backhaul from US East Coast to Asia. Unfortunately for the SCA, the discount was insufficient to fully counter the African threat. However, since then, bunkerfuel prices have been steadily climbing, slowly eroding at least part of the benefits of the African routing.

With the new announcement of discounts of up to 65% for US East Coast to Asia liner services, it is clear that this is more aimed as a direct competitive move against the Panama Canal and less aimed at Africa. Especially the fact the Northern ports on the USEC “only” receive a 45% discount whereas as Southern ports can get up to 65% discount show that this is aimed at preventing carriers from switching to the new expanded Panama Canal.

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Changing technology is influencing the way shoppers look at online retail, specifically by shaping their expectation towards delivery times. In the world of ecommerce, consumers have a buy it now, wear it now mentality, no longer content to wait the once conventional 2 weeks for a delivery. China is the epicenter of e commerce, like all early adopters, China who literally only coined the the word for logistics 20 years ago,(物流 – wù liú – cargo flow) were quick to see that a direct to consumer logistics model best suited their country. Why make cities even bigger and more congested with unnecessary retail space when it has become possible to bring the store to your front door. The resultant benefits are self evident, less trucking, more biking, less emissions better air quality and a myriad of other benefits which I will return to later in the article. However it is what has happened in Cross Border E Commerce (CBEC) that really is the game changer for global logistics. Consider this,in 2017 4.3 million TEU will be imported into China driven by CBEC.

CBECis a specific international trade activity, and is the technical basis for the promotion of economic integration and trade globalization,which has brought a Read More