Why the Cost of Shipping Goods From China Is Suddenly Soaring
Odd Lots
Bloomberg
4.5 • 2K Ratings
🗓️ 18 January 2021
⏱️ 48 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
The coronavirus crisis snarled global shipping in early 2020 as borders were closed, but lots of people expected it to improve as vessels returned to position. Instead, more than a year later, the shipping crisis has only gotten worse and standard container rates on some transpacific routes have more than quadrupled, leading to yet another headwind for economies in the midst of fragile recoveries and global trade. On this episode, we speak to economist, historian, and author Marc Levinson. He talks about where all this transport disruption is coming from, what it means for global trade, and whether it will lead to a big rethink of the shipping industry.
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| 0:00.0 | Join us in Seattle on November 8th for Bloomberg's intelligent automation briefing about transformation in a time of uncertainty. During this special evening event, top business and IT executives will gather to explore ways in which intelligent automation can offset economic |
| 0:15.8 | pressures and help organizations thrive by enhancing operational efficiencies and stakeholder |
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| 0:22.3 | This program is proudly sponsored by IBM. Register at |
| 0:25.8 | Bloomberg Live.com slash automation slash radio. Hello and welcome to another episode of the Odd Lots Podcast. I'm Joe Wiesenthall. |
| 0:45.0 | I'm Tracy Allaway. |
| 0:46.0 | And I'm Joe Wiesenthal. |
| 0:48.0 | So Joe, I have something to admit to you. |
| 0:52.0 | Oh boy, here we go. Okay. I'm worried you're going to think |
| 0:56.4 | less of me. There's no chance of that just just tell me about tracing. So one of my |
| 1:00.8 | long-held ambitions in life is to travel via container ship, preferably, you know, a long journey across the Pacific. |
| 1:10.0 | Yeah. I think I know someone who did that. I think I know someone who went from Japan to the U.S. as a traveler on a industrial |
| 1:21.4 | container ship. |
| 1:23.0 | Yeah, it's something you can do or I should say you were able to do it before the global pandemic. |
| 1:30.0 | I'm sure it's not allowed right now for many reasons. |
| 1:33.0 | Obviously you have restrictions on travel, you have border restrictions, |
| 1:37.0 | but the other big reason is that global shipping is kind of just a mess at the moment. |
| 1:43.0 | Right, and that's related to the pandemic and the supply chain disruptions and of course |
| 1:49.9 | they've been happening for about a year now, but they don't seem to be abating the general disruptions |
| 1:56.5 | that we've seen. I mean, the world seems to be getting by and maybe we haven't had as |
| 2:01.3 | severe shortages of things as we might have feared last spring, but there |
| 2:06.7 | are still all kinds of reports about how sort of messed up everything. |
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