摘要: |
At the end of 2019, I was anticipating that the introduction of the IMO 2020 sulfur regulations was going to further disrupt the system of international trade that was already turned on its head by the U.S./China trade war. Then COVID forced a reset of all expectations. To understand the big shifts happening with North American container trade today and form an educated outlook for the remainder of the year, we must revisit how the trade war affected global container flows. Prior to 2019, the U.S. container market was stable in many important ways. There were strong correlations between real GDP and import demand, and between import demand and seaport throughput. The relative balance of imports from Asia, other North American countries (Canada and Mexico), and Europe had been very stable since 2011. Moreover, there was a slow, predictable shift in coastal shares of container imports, with the Pacific Coast ports losing share to ports on the Atlantic and Gulf coasts. |