Shipping update

Follow-up to subject of this post

Shipping industry turmoil started in the pandemic (2020-2021). Costs soared to ship products (like furniture, electronics, etc.) from overseas. Ports were backed up with dozens of ships. A combination of increased demand and a lack of dock workers (covid-related) drove up shipping delays and costs.

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Here we are now in 2023, and those situations have largely corrected themselves. Conditions are now near normal pre-2020 levels . . and the cost of shipping those goods has also returned to near normal. But while costs are going down, demand is collapsing.

Orders for manufactured items from China is down a whopping 90%, while shipping companies have way too many ships and containers (20'x8' or bigger). There will be more losses for them because most shipping customers plan to decrease ocean freight spending in 2023.

We'll be coming out of the economic turmoil of pandemic lockdowns for some time yet. This turmoil will show up somewhere in our inflation problem.

from CNBC