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Weaponizing transparency: Before complying to CO2 bans, let's see if the cure is worse than the disease
One can understand the advantage to the counterintuitive support big business gives to the politically correct "wokeness" movement, and the soaring compliance costs that new rules and regulations throws up.
The higher the compliance costs, the harder it is for smaller business rivals to meet them. And if rivals go out of business, big business is there to absorb the market share. For some, it's win-win. We had seen this before. In the last decade, the number of major independent shipping lines has been reduced by half from 20 to 10.
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What next for Taiwan? Expert says China's demand for on semi-conductors enough to prevent serious trouble
The lion is on perfectly good terms with the antelope until that moment he chooses to eat one. Such is the nature of the unpredictability of the African savannah and much of the Asia-Pacific diplomatic world today.
None is more wary of the Chinese assertiveness than Taiwan that has become a target of threats from Beijing including frequent military intrusions into its air space.
Attempts to lure Taiwan with promises of Hong Kong-like status within Beijing's control, while never accepted at face value, had gained some minority support for the sake of peace in our time. But such hopes were dashed when China broke the terms of the Joint Declaration with Britain and intervened in the internal affairs of the former British colony long before that expected in 2049, allowing people enough time to devise exit strategies.
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Online shopping has balkanized destinations of consumer goods, making it hard to get chassis to/from customers
Lately, ocean carriers have identified and exploited an e-commerce boom that has enjoyed unparalleled growth during the long-lasting Covid scare.
In doing so, shipping lines have made an effort to address troublesome glitches in the supply chain - equipment shortages and unsatisfactory chassis circulation. These have become more acute in meeting the needs of door-to-door delivery essential to online shopping.
US consumers last year spent US$861 billion online, up 44 per cent from $598 billion in 2019. That means there are many of them and many more deliveries needed to meet their needs.
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How the solution to a West African shipping problem may well prompt big business to think small to survive
An article in Accra's Modern Ghana magazine touched on a troubling problem that has befallen smaller beneficial cargo owners (BCOs), who may not be big, but are numerous enough to be taken seriously.
These traders inhabit particular stages in the supply chain, from producers to last-milers for whom ships and shipping have got too big to accommodate their need of speed and reliability - needs that have become more acute with the explosive growth of e-commerce.
This underappreciated problem came into focus in an article by Maxwell Ampong, a West African agri-commodities trader and the CEO of Ghana's Maxwell Investments, who wrestled with the question of why there are so few containers available in the world today.
He eventually focused more sharply on an issue more relevant for his readers, small and medium sized enterprise (SME) owners. It is that the one-big-size-fits all approach that global shipping has adopted does not suit his readers. Nor is it likely to suit millions of SMEs in the rest of Africa, and indeed around the world in the Americas and Asia.
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Intra Asia Trade Specialists |
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