On October 17, Trump attended a ribbon-cutting ceremony in a somewhat surreal place. He stood in the new 100,000 square foot Louis Vuitton workshop in Keene, Texas, a small country town with just over 6,000 people. On the factory wall hung an oil painting of the brand’s founder, Alex Katz, alongside a poster of George […]
On September 18th, workers at the Port of Qingdao, China, lined up to welcome the Tian Xi, a vessel owned by COSCO arriving from Finland. The vessel got a welcome ceremony because it had arrived in China via a particular route: the Tian Xi had traveled through the Arctic, along the emerging Northern Sea Route. […]
As tariffs on Chinese imports pile up, manufacturers are finding new ways to prove the adage “constraints breed creativity.” A time-tested strategy consists of shifting manufacturing operations to change a product’s country of origin. Shipping products that lack a “Made in China” sticker mitigate the effects of the $550 billion worth of US tariffs that […]
Last year saw an extraordinary rate of growth for air cargo. No one expected 2019 to replicate that level of demand. Still, even with mild expectations, the global air freight market has been strikingly weak in the first half of 2019. The International Air Transport Association (IATA) previously forecast an average annual growth rate of […]
The European Union represents a unique project in economic integration. Likewise, Brexit represents a unique problem in trade relations. The single market created by the EU has meant an absence of duties and quotas for Member States, along with free movement for workers and a reduced administrative burden. While most hoped that a new FTA […]
As Hong Kong enters its tenth week of increasingly violent and disruptive demonstrations, both companies and the people on the ground are growing increasingly nervous. On Friday, roughly a thousand protestors dressed in black staged a sit-in at Hong Kong international airport, distributing flyers, and chanting “Do You Hear the People Sing?” from Les Miserables. […]
Peak season is always a hectic time for shippers, carriers, and logistics professionals. While its arrival (from about mid-August through mid-October) is fairly predictable, it’s a season characterized by abrupt changes in the shipping landscape. However, even by peak season standards, 2019’s pre-Christmas rush may be in a class by itself for sheer unpredictability. There […]
These days, the outlook for international trade can turn on a dime (or a tweet). International supply chains, on the other hand, take much longer to adjust to changes, especially when it comes to China, the world’s second largest economy and the site of so much of the world’s manufacturing. However, despite the difficulties of […]
Since the White House imposed its first round of tariffs against China in February 2018, each new escalation of the trade war between the world’s two biggest economies has been greeted with disbelief. Yet this month, with the tariff rate on $200 billion of Chinese imports rising from 10 to 25 percent, business leaders, economists, […]
In March, Italy became the first G7 country to formally join China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). The deal, confirmed during a visit by Chinese President Xi Jinping laid the groundwork for a preliminary $2.8 billion in Chinese investments in Italian projects, including infrastructure improvements at Italian ports in Trieste, Genoa, and Palermo. The announcement […]