Is The Ship Sinking?

On today’s show we are talking about the movement of goods entering our country and how this might affect industrial real estate and jobs.

The mainstream media have been widely reporting that shipping imports to the US are down by 64% in the first weeks of April. This is an example of how statistics can be used to sensationalize a narrative. Compared with the last week of March, it is true, shipments are down 64% from the week earlier. It’s also true, but not widely reported that shippers were rushing to complete imports to the US ahead of the April 2 tariff deadline. When you look at the long term averages, the number of ships leaving port for the US in early April is down about 10%. This is pretty consistent across the major carriers including MSC, Ocean Alliance, Gemini Cooperation and Premier Alliance. Gemini had the fewest cancellations at about 2% of their sailings cancelled and Premier Alliance had 18% of their sailings cancelled. So the thing to remember is that the pull back is based on a massive inventory build in the US ahead of the tariff implementation. Even if the tariffs had not been as dramatic as the April 2 announcement, the inventory build had already been done preemptively and we would have seen a drop in sailings anyway in the second quarter. 

Last week the US unveiled its new Maritime policy which is intended to remove China’s dominance of the global merchant marine fleet. The US produces less than 1% of the new ships each year and China about half of the world’s ships. China is manufacturing 50x more ships than the US. The thinking is that the US and indeed all countries will be dependent on China for delivery of essential goods into the country and therefore such dependence could be a major national security risk for the country. The US is struggling to manufacture new ships for its navy. Part of the struggle is based on the fact that you’re not going to be great at building navy ships if you’re not making any commercial ships and lack the skills to build commercial vessels. 

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