Episode Transcript
[00:00:05] Speaker A: Hi, Charlotte Goldstone here, host of the Lodestars Weekly News in Brief Podcast. Every week, thousands of shippers and freight professionals from across the world listen to our podcasts, whether on our website or their preferred streaming platforms such as Apple Podcasts or Spotify.
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Good morning and welcome to the Lodestar Podcast News In Brief, we're going to be recapping last week's supply chain news and giving you some insight on what you might see on the Lodestar this week. I'm your host Charlotte Goldstone and I'm going to be joined as always by the Lodestar's Managing editor Gavin Van Mahl and the Lodestar publisher Alex Lenane.
Towards the end of last week we had some reports of strikes in two major European ports. Two lashing companies were striking at the Port of Rotterdam from Wednesday until Friday, which meant vessels alongside experienced delays and interruptions in load and discharge operations that was affecting all the major terminals at the port. And at the same time, there is indefinite industrial action at the port of Antwerp, Bruges, by the Professional association of Pilots that's been ongoing since the 5th of October in response to recent federal pension reforms. Kuhner and Nagel warned that this has led to significant disruption of shipping movements and obviously that constant threat of European port congestion that we experienced just a few months ago is kind of starting to ease. But really yard utilization across a lot of European ports is still very high, so any disruptions like this could mean we start to see congestion build up again.
Also in port news, carriers are raising shipping costs to and from Chittagong in an effort to recoup costs following the Port Authority's decision to slap a 70% tariff on service charges last month. But we also had some more updates related to another kind of port fee. This one, of course, related to the US and the Trade Representative port fees on Chinese carriers and Chinese built vessels. Gav Last week the CBP gave some instruction on how these fees should be paid. What are the details here?
[00:02:22] Speaker B: Okay, so Last week the U.S. customs and Border Protection notified the trade that the fees would be paid through a portal that they've created called the Vessel Entrance and Clearance System. They added that the onus would be on vessel operators. One would assume that that's the captain when he arrives at a US port to produce evidence that the fee has been paid if it's a Chinese built ship or it's operated by a Chinese shipping company.
To be honest, I've had a look at the system. Looks really pretty simple. I mean it's not much unlike you know, filling out a car parking form in line or something like that. Yeah, it's pretty, it's pretty simple. CBP did actually say in its advisory it advised vessels to have completed the payment three days in advance before a vessel enters US waters and, and so that if it's discovered that fees haven't been paid then the vessel might be denied entry to a port or it might be denied leaving a port if the non payment is found while it's there. Or it could be barred from unloading or loading cargo. So that's what it is at the moment. I mean to be honest it's a fairly simple thing but there's bound to be teething problems.
[00:03:39] Speaker A: Yeah, well, I mean this is going to cost quite a bit more than a parking ticket. There were some calculations done on the impact to Chinese carriers versus US carriers. So what are the figures looking like?
[00:03:49] Speaker C: Who's worse off?
[00:03:51] Speaker B: Oh well, I mean just by sheer difference in size of fleet, the Chinese are obviously worse off because they've got so many more ships compared to the Americans obviously. The two carriers principally affected by the Chinese reciprocal port fees would be Matson and the US Flag operations of C of a CGM on the basis that it's these two carriers who would be affected.
Lionelitica did some calculations on with the caveat that the Chinese fees are exactly reciprocal, I. E. They are exactly the same amount that the US are trying to charge the Chinese and on that basis Matson and CMO CGM would be liable for some 180 million.
One interesting thing about that is that although with the Chinese carriers we've seen quite a lot of movement to try and limit their liability for the fees such as, you know, removing Costco and OOCL's Chinese ships from the Ocean alliance services and replacing them with the CMA and Evergreen vessels that have been built outside China. You know, that sort of thing.
In contrast to that, you can't really see much room for Matson or CMA CGM's US flag fleet to do a similar kind of thing because they need to be flying the US flag to be able to do their Jones act operations which actually are part of those Trans Pacific strings. Other than that, I have to say also that there's been absolutely no other communication from Beijing or that it was the People's State Council of China which issued the decree. And as far as I'm aware, there's been no indication of what sort of level of fees they're looking at.
[00:05:41] Speaker A: Now I want to look at the container market as a whole because last week we got the August figures from Container Trade Statistics. Let's cast our minds back to August 1st. I'm going to set the scene. Trump extended the reciprocal tariff pause to the 1st of August. That was originally the 9th of July.
And July was the month that there was a lot of uncertainty with trade deals being made or new tariff figures being tossed around. The 50% tariff on Brazil took effect on 6 August. And on this day also there was an announced possible 50% tariff on India by 27 August. This has now been implemented. After a few extensions, the reciprocal tariffs eventually came into effect on the 7th of August.
So how did container movements react during all of this, gav?
[00:06:29] Speaker B: Well, I mean, it was another massive month. I mean, as far as the Container Trade Statistics data for August tells us, it was a record breaker, 16.61 million TEUs globally, their highest ever for a month on their database anyway. And brings to that's four consecutive months now that global volumes have been over the 16 million TE mark, again, another record. So in global terms, and this is completely notwithstanding the tariffs in global terms. What tariffs? What are you talking about? Don't know what you mean.
Okay, you've got to remember with this that there's a slight sort of discrepancy and it's worth taking a minute to explain. So if you look at US port throughput data for August, you will see one of the busiest months on record for August. Right. But if you're looking at US shipment data, that is containers loaded with a destination in the US loaded during the month of August, you will see that they're down almost everywhere. This is all year on year comparisons, they were down 12.3% on the trans Pacific. In fact, they were down on every single trade going into the US Bars marginal increases from Oceania and Sub Saharan Africa. So it's really interesting because let's look at the Far east to North America trade as an example. You will see a 12.3% decline in shipments. But these were shipments that were loaded during August. So this decline won't actually turn up in the volume throughput reports of particularly US west coast ports until they release their September figures. But I mean, if you're looking just on the CTS figures alone, we're talking a drop of around 300,000 TEU year on year.
And Going by these CTS figures, we should be seeing some very big declines across the North American import ports over the course of September. And in fact, that's been extensively predicted by a number of analysts. Now, meanwhile, on all the other trades, they're still doing really well. I mean, if you just, just look at the export trades of the Far East. So let's, let's already say that we've lost 300,000 TEU out of the Far east going to the US. So what happened on other trades? Well, Far East, Latin America exports up 90,000 TEU. Intra Asian exports up 200,000 TERU. Exports to Europe up 200,000 TERU to India and the Middle east, they were up 160,000 TERU. I mean, even Africa was up 75,000 TEU, and Australia was up another 20,000 TEU. So it's clear that all the losses that we've seen on the North American trades have more than been made up for by gains on other trades. It's really quite something.
[00:09:30] Speaker A: Well, we know that carriers are quick to change their services to respond to demand, and we had a few stories about this last week. So what, what transpired?
[00:09:40] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, we're getting, we're getting service cancellations and we're getting service additions and, and pretty much these reflect what we've just been speaking about. Charlotte. So Hapag Lloyd had a service called the Caribbean Express service, which had run for a number of years between North Europe and the Caribbean, and the Caribbean coastline of South America ports such as Cartagena going back to February this year, just prior to the launch of the Gemini Corporation. That Caribbean service was actually sort of Maersk came in as a slot charterer and it was announced that it was separate to the Gemini's transatlantic network, but it was sort of augmenting it, if you like, fast forward, you know, sort of eight months to now, and it's pretty obvious that demand isn't enough. So the Caribbean sort of nature of that service has basically been discontinued, with the main ports to be served via transshipment. And effectively it's Hapag streaming its transatlantic operation. Now, on the other side of the equation, we've seen a range of Intra Asia services launched. A lot of them have been focused on Indonesia, which is sort of indicative of the emerging strength of the country. I mean, it's a massive country, right? We used to call this at the load stop. We used to tag any story about Indonesia with Indonesia, Southeast Asia's sleeping giant. And that's a tag that's been going on for 10 years, but now it appears that it's sort of finally waking up. And then lastly, yeah, I did an analysis of looking at the growth of the Asian Latin American trade. This is something that we mentioned when we interviewed Nigel Boozy from Container Trade Statistics a couple of months ago. I mean, there has been extraordinary growth in Argentina. They had something like 100% increase. Their TEU count in August was 100% year on year up. And from China it was 120% year on up. And it's a classically weird story, to be honest with you, Charlotte, at heart. There has been a massive surge in demand in Argentina for consumer goods, capital goods, automotive parts, parts for their automotive industry.
And the basic reason why this surge has been created is because Javier Milei, the sort of populist leader who recently came to power in Argentina, one of his chief election promises was to liberalize the country's economy. And he's done this amazingly. He's liberalized import tariffs. Basically. He's done the exact opposite of what the Trump administration has done in America. He's done away with all tariffs. He's done away with a whole load of import controls. They've had this project to basically artificially try and hold up the value of the peso, which has meant the imports have been really cheap. And boy, have Argentines reacted to it. And they reacted to such an extent that actually the country's foreign exchange reserves, that is their reserves of dollars, are now dangerously low because they've gone out and bought as much as they could have. This is what economists classically refer to as releasing pent up demand.
So you're actually now in this terribly weird situation where I believe it's this week that Mr. Milei and the Argentine treasury are in Washington at the moment negotiating a new $20 billion support package from the Americans to maintain the value of the peso within the band, which that they need it to be.
So really weird. You've got basically a populist prime minister of Argentina going to the obvious populist Donald Trump, with begging bowl in hand to support policies in Argentina that are the direct polar opposite of the policies that Donald Trump thinks should govern global trade. It's really quite odd.
[00:13:38] Speaker A: Yeah, no, the trade lanes piece is definitely a good way to monitor these kind of niche movements that are happening. But finally, GAV rates are always a good indication of what is happening with demand and supply. What were the figures like last week? Was it another downward movement?
[00:13:54] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, unsurprisingly was. You've got to remember it's very muted because we for large part of last week we were still in golden week that officially ended on Wednesday, but you don't really see workers returning back at their jobs on Thursday and Friday just to go off the weekend. So it's always a strange period and it doesn't really hold up as a, as a point of comparison.
However, that said, yeah, they were very low single digit declines on all the main east, west, the Trans Pacific, the Asia Europe trades, the Transatlantic over the course of last week. So all eyes now certainly in Europe at least will be on the 15th of October, the Wednesday Implementation of new FAK rate levels which they need to get the sort of spot rate back up to around the $2,000 per 40 foot mark. So the question this week is whether those new FAK rate levels will stick.
Our sources in the market are skeptical, but I think there's a sort of acceptance in the market that they need to stabilize a bit. And I think there's also a feeling that I've detected that there might be some trade growth around towards the end of the year.
I think also in the medium term, Charlotte, that we should start thinking about the Red Sea again given the ceasefire that's been announced over the past few days. I noticed that maersk's share price lost 4% on the day that the ceasefire was announced because obviously this ceasefire opens up the possibility that the circa Cape of Good Hope sailings might come to an end. You know, the caveat obviously is that the Houthis who are the proponents of the blockage aren't actually directly involved in Gaza, but you would have suspected that they will be part of the, of the peace process if you like. You know, if the Red Sea opens up again then that's going to be a massive disruption, right? Because there's suddenly going to be overwhelming over capacity on the Asia Europe trades and that that will spill out globally.
[00:15:58] Speaker A: I had a story at the end of last week about contracting season and about shippers negotiating at the moment and I had some insight from some lawyers and some consultants saying that shippers are in a very powerful position at the to negotiate lower rates and better service. So it's going to be interesting to see what happens there.
[00:16:17] Speaker B: Just to what you're saying about those contracts, it's probably worthwhile. I don't know if you Remember beginning of 24 when we were in a similar situation as we are now, right. Really loss making spot rates and I remember the carriers started playing really hardball with this. I know that shippers are in a strong position this year, but they were in a strong position at the beginning of 2024 as well. And it was fairly widespread that the levels that shippers were going for, carriers were just walking away from those negotiations without signing anything. I remember Rolf Haben Janssen saying that they told their people, you know, don't sign it at those levels just to win the business because those levels are loss making. So they've been in strong positions before and it hasn't always translated into highly favorable contracts.
Hmm.
[00:17:05] Speaker A: One to watch then. It'd be interesting to see what happens. Thank you very much for joining me and for your help today, Gab.
[00:17:11] Speaker B: Thank you very much, Charlotte.
[00:17:12] Speaker A: I'm now joined by Alex Lenane to chat about air freight. Alex, Gav and I just spoke about how ocean freight rates have been on kind of a downward trend. So what's the movement like in air?
[00:17:23] Speaker C: Well, we get sent lists of rates from forwarders, spot rates, that is, and so we've now started to compare and index them.
So last week we saw the spot rates from China to Europe have fallen again about 3% and 5% to destinations across Europe.
So that follows something of an uptick just before Golden Week. It's likely that the drop is due to factories restarting output and therefore not actually sending out very much immediately after the holiday closures.
The mark of whether we get much of a peak season or not is still to be seen.
So traditionally rates should firm up from about next week through to mid November at least.
But as ever, time will tell. So this is a very hard quarter to predict. And I was surprised really to see rates drop. So obviously we've also heard last week from the Air Forwarders Association, Brandon Fried, that air cargo is taking time to adjust to the end of de minimis. He said that the industry has moved overnight from light touch clearance to full formal entry.
He added, we are seeing fewer parcels but larger, better documented shipments.
So realignment is far from finished. And that seems to be true for all the cargo markets pretty much since Trump came into power.
On another note, we've also taken a look at the EU Latin America trade loan by air.
Now we've seen that the corridor has started to mature and strengthen over the past year and Latin America is looking to rebalance trade with the eu.
Rates are much less volatile than they used to be and shippers are increasingly valuing consistency and service over pricing. So it's becoming one of the most resilient lanes. Definitely worth a read.
[00:19:02] Speaker A: Yeah, I think, I mean, as a general theme, right now trade lanes outside of the US Are definitely getting more resilient. And speaking of chaos from the US we had another report that a move from the White House could leave the country's logistics operators understaffed. What's this all about?
[00:19:18] Speaker C: Well, yeah, news of the changes to the H1B visa, for which there is now a hundred thousand dollars annual fee, have been mostly viewed through the lens of the big tech companies which use them a lot. But we've spoken to forwarders and recruitment agencies, and they say that these visas are very much used by 3pls as well. The original idea of the visa, which was brought in by Bush no. 1, was to import talent where it didn't exist in the U.S.
so what does this mean for forwarding? We asked.
In all likelihood, SMEs won't use it. It's too expensive.
And forwarders suggested that a graduated approach may have been better, which would allow time to boost domestic qualifications and training.
There are also concerns over early investment in startups without foreign talent, and research shows the H1B visa has supported US productivity gains. It's a really interesting article and something that may well come to effect. Forward in business.
[00:20:17] Speaker A: Yeah, that is interesting. Well, another sector that US Regulation has had a big impact on has been E commerce, but you reported that in general, this vertical has remained quite strong. What patterns are you seeing and how are forwarders responding to all of this?
[00:20:31] Speaker C: Yeah, there were quite a few studies published last week on E commerce.
More than one third of E commerce players find customs a barrier to success, according to a DHL survey, and 96% said logistics was essential to their sales.
So this implies that there is a nice space for forwarders in the E Commerce vertical, and quite a lot of forwarders have indeed signed up for it. But as you heard at the Caspian Air Cargo Conference, forwarders would actually prefer customers with a wider range of needs. So simply booking capacity and offering customers brokerage is not really enough for them. And they pointed out that the traffic tends to be one way.
Since publishing the article, I've been talking to others who say that in the US in particular, three PLs are looking for ways into E commerce and now may be a good time to do so now that de minimis is gone. Anyway, forwarder activity in E commerce is definitely one to watch and I think we'll see some changes there.
[00:21:30] Speaker A: We'll be paying close attention to that. Thank you so much for all your help, Alex. Finally, I want to ask you if you could just recap what's been on.
[00:21:37] Speaker C: Premium Last week, sure, Lodestar Premium had insights into the DACSA reorganization.
It took a deeper look into the FedEx class action. There is of course more on the expedited job files, including and I include quote marks here, the email that changed everything.
There's an examination of U.S. imports and another on the U.S. road freight market.
Plus a really good article on how port terminal ownership has become a geopolitical tool. There's an awful lot you can learn from Lone Star Premium, frankly.
[00:22:07] Speaker A: Thank you very much Alex.
[00:22:08] Speaker C: Thanks Charlotte.
[00:22:16] Speaker A: So now we have rounded up all the main events from last week's supply chain news. Here is what you might see coming up on the Lodestar. The Lodestar team's going a bit global this week. Firstly I am in Copenhagen for the Aviation Connect event. I've got interviews lined up with Celebi Aviation, hopefully to talk about their suspension in India as well as many other topics. Plus I'll be speaking to Cargo IQ about airline standards. Alex Weidman is also off on a trip a bit further afield. He's going to Johannesburg with DHL and he's going to be speaking to many different divisions within the DHL umbrella such as E Commerce Express or Global Forwarding. This trip is actually for a spotlight on Africa Trade as DHL is launching a new and expanded version of its Global Connectedness Tracker and that provides updates about the state of globalization and global trade. So I'm sure there will definitely be some articles from that that you will not want to miss. And as I'm sure you are all aware, we are coming up to that 14th of October deadline for the USTR port call fees that we spoke about earlier on in the episode. These will come into for on Tuesday this week so we're going to start to get a clearer picture of what the impacts might end up looking like. So you can look out for that kind of coverage on the Lodestar as well if you do listen to this podcast. Thank you so much for your support but something that I do want to highlight is that over half our listeners are not actually subscribed to the Lodestar and I promise you that is where all the main insight is. This is just a tiny, tiny snippet of what we can do. Honestly, I'm really not the main event here so if you are not already I implore you to go and check it out for exclusive content and breaking supply chain news. Thanks again and I will see you next time.
