How different visions of the future will likely impact the international world of shipping
 If Kamala Harris has won the US Presidential election, an impressive socialist advance has been achieved as defined by World Economic Forum, that is, its "Great Reset". Such a victory would bring together US President Harris with, British Prime Minister Keirs Starmer, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Australian Prime Minister Antony Albanese - all declared enthusiasts for the WEF and all its works.
Their aim, to create a WEF “CO-topia” that focuses on a vision for the year of 2030. This would have us live in a build-back-better world, in which people would own nothing but be happy
Needless to say this would have a transformative impact on shipping and world trade, though little if any time is spent discussing that. What the WEF website did say on implementation was that there would be three levers of agency to achieve this – individual action, corporate action and government action.
One is left to speculate that it would be a highly controlled world in which nothing would be permitted except that which had been approved. Long gone would be times in which everything was permitted unless expressly forbidden. Only the most important individual would have the right to act with spontaneity on a large scale.
What the WEF website did say on implementation was that there were three levers to achieve this – individual action, corporate action and government action.
Individual action would have to be part of the overall plan if this CO-topian vision were to work. Thus, such individuals would tend to be like Bill Gates purchasing vast tracts of United States farmland for reasons that are still imperfectly understood. Not so government and corporate roles, which are perfectly understandable and long experienced by most of us.
The WEF process called the Great Reset has enabled bans and mandates justified the Covid scare, which now fades into memory. This had serious long-term consequences for economic growth, public debt, unemployment and a real deterioration of human wellbeing.
So much for the Covid crisis of yesteryear. What sustains WEF hopes for the future are crises yet to come. That's when society as a whole can be again be put under orders to do the bureaucrat's bidding.
"The level of cooperation and ambition this implies is unprecedented. But it is not some impossible dream," said the WEF website. "In fact, one silver lining of the pandemic is that it has shown how quickly we can make radical changes to our lifestyles. Almost instantly, the crisis forced businesses and individuals to abandon practices long claimed to be essential, from frequent air travel to working in an office."
It is clear from even cursory review of the WEF beliefs that it is not a philosophy of the right, rejecting the notion that he who governs best, governs least. What stays one's hand in describing it as socialist is its close association with Wall Street corporate giants worldwide. But one can easily see similarities with National Socialism, which is another species of socialism, with its collaboration with BMW, Krupp and IG Farben.
The WEF has set out a working model of society contained in the 15-minute city concept, which is not a Klaus Schwab project, but is often taken to be one. And much is made of the "far right" blamed for making that mistake. It is also wrongly suggested that the 15-minute city would ban cars. This too is denied by its creators. Yet what is overlooked is that the 15-Minute City would not be all it could be with cars cluttering the streets. They certainly do not appear in the designers' illustrative schematics.
As the shipping world has long discovered, there is much that can be done to create a dystopian brave new world through restrictive regulation rather than the prescriptive edicts of central planners. One can achieve these ends less noticeably through rules and regulation, so the pain is targeted on a particular sector that finds it difficult to fight back.
The major initiative in this area has been attached to fears of climate change, specifically global warming. This has caused costs of permissible fuels to soar. At one time, there were whole trades that might have disappeared because of fuel costs. Then out of the blue came a precipitous drop in oil prices that saved the day.
But what made the difference and allowed world trade to enjoy unparalleled growth was the increase in size of containership capacity. The biggest ship in 2004 was 14,000-TEU to the biggest ship in 2024 or 24,000-TEU. Big ship crews were 25-strong back then but fell to 20-strong over the 20-year period.
This had brought down slot costs, that is, the cost of carrying each container, thus allowing a single ship to carry more containers at less cost. This is the principal reason, that costly new fuels have not had the negative impact many feared they would.
But there are other factors afoot that will have a serious impact on world shipping. The working class of the west are now in a state of revolt - in which violence is not to be discounted - who have grown weary of their jobs being done offshore.
Looking to the future, we seem to be coming to a fork in the road. Should Donald Trump win the US presidency alone in November, but lose the House and the Senate one can imagine a flurry of executive orders to wall up the border, perhaps an end to the Russo-Ukraine War and an acceleration of the Abraham Accords that may yet bring peace to the Middle East. If Trump wins more substantially, one can expect much tumult and consternation as the public service is reformed top to bottom, and vastly reduced.
On the other hand, If Harris wins, the same Deep State people who ran the Biden Administration will run the Harris administration. But by the time she gets through her first year, they will have run out of other people's money to spend. And we shall see what we shall see as the universe unfolds as it is wont to do.
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