As US-China Relations Worsen, Expect Supply Chain Chaos (Freight Waves)
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Leland Miller, the CEO of China Beige Book, a firm that tabulates independent Chinese economic data, said last week that the country was undergoing a “paradigm shift” in its governance and economic models that will complicate its further development, including the end of debt-fueled growth. It will be difficult to track this shift accurately, given the unreliability of official data.
Finally, if the U.S. and China decide to pursue a policy of mutual divestment, we should expect a more diverse, less China-centric trans-Pacific trade. There are other exciting economies in the region that the United States is connected to, including Vietnam, the Philippines, Taiwan, Korea, Japan and Indonesia. Eastbound freight flows may have more widely distributed origins as China’s share diminishes. Ports like South Korea’s Busan, Malaysia’s Port Klang, Taiwan’s Kaohsiung and Japan’s Yokohama could become relatively more important.
The change in network structure could threaten the stability of the container-ship alliances that control capacity in the trans-Pacific and make the 20,000-plus twenty-foot equivalent unit mega-ships built to serve the largest ports harder to fill and less competitive. Capacity could structurally loosen on what are now the densest lanes, like Shanghai to Los Angeles, while slots could be harder to find on more obscure but growing lanes. The upshot here is that even a prudent trade strategy seeking to de-risk China by sourcing goods in other Asian countries will be exposed to knock-on effects from the challenges the U.S.-China trade is fated to face.READ MORE
