What's happening in Mediterranean & Africa

 

Eng

How very different EU and US economic realities regarding China appear to be converging into one

The two needed elements - Europe and America - in the current decoupling process from China are moving at different paces, but to much the same end it would appear. While they share similar motivations in wanting less to do with the Xi Jinping Communist regime, Europe and America have markedly divergent interests.

For America is the principal buyer of Chinese goods, but in terms of dollar volume, Europe is chiefly a seller of technology to China. To achieve a shared goal one must develop very different supply chains in one case and very different "sales chains" in the other.

Prospects of reefer containers look good, some would even say recession-proof post-Covid

Unless the Russo-Ukrainian War brews up into a World War holocaust, or destructive progressives in the West return the planet to extreme poverty from which it has recently escaped, then the life may well move into those broad sunlit uplands of widespread good fortune.

On a more mundane level, one can safely say that if the universe unfolded as it might, prospects look especially good for the reefer trade in international shipping, because as affluence spreads to more people, so does the demand for temperature-controlled shipping, studies show.

Shame of shipping: Being force marched in a Children’s Crusade by Greta Thunberg et al.

No better proof could be found - if any were needed - that the anti-carbon craze raging through the shipping world will only benefit big business by destroying smaller concerns, unable to meet soaring compliance costs.

Never in the history of international shipping, except perhaps in times of total war, has there been such a divorce between an economic need for change and the radical change demanded by bureaucrats because of an imagined threat to life on the planet.

Shipping in a post pandemic period emerges in a different world than the one we knew in 2020

With so many factors at play on the world's trade lanes, from war and peace to catastrophic rate collapse only the brave and foolhardy venture forth with predictions on what's left of 2023 will bring.

Playing it safe is Lars Jensen, principal at Vespucci Maritime consultancy in Copenhagen, offers the pessimistic view. Optimism is found in the company of DP World chairman Sultan Ahmed Bin Sulayem, who told Bloomberg: “I don’t know that all that will happen in 2023. We understand that there are issues, but I think that business is capable of dealing with them We learned that the hard way during Covid and I think we can overcome.”

 

Mediterranean & Africa
Trade Specialists

Recent Issue

China Trade

May, 2023

Europe Trade

Apr, 2023

U.S. Trade

Mar, 2023

Intra Asia Trade

Feb, 2023