<\/p>\n
The Great Recession, the Sept. 11 attacks, the 1973 oil embargo \u2014 none of these modern crises constricted trade flows as quickly and as sharply as the Covid-19 disease has.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Not even World War II delivered the kind of sudden economic knockout that is paralyzing global supply chains and rendering almost silent the most bustling cities in the developed world as businesses close and consumers obey orders to stay at home.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\u201cThis could be seen as a war-like scenario without the physical asset destruction,\u201d World Trade Organization Chief Economist Robert Koopman told Bloomberg in a telephone interview.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Incoming data from some of the world\u2019s busiest ports, already seeing diminished cargo traffic with China\u2019s economy shut down during the past two months, paint an ugly picture of a further collapse that many economists expect to persist well into the first half of the year.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
U.S. import and export volumes slowed in the weeks leading\u00a0up to\u00a0shutdowns in American cities, according to IHS Markit data compiled by Bloomberg. U.S. exports have been hit particularly hard, and those figures will be key to watch in the days ahead to gauge the severity of the downturn.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
The port of Shanghai \u2014 the largest in the world \u2014 saw a 20% year-over-year drop in container throughput in February, according to the Shanghai Municipal Statistics Bureau. Last month, cargo volume at the Port of Long Beach\u00a0declined 9.8%<\/a>\u00a0from a year earlier and the total container throughput at Hong Kong\u2019s port\u00a0fell 11%<\/a>\u00a0on a cumulative basis.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Ports in British Columbia, in Canada, have seen a \u201cmaterial slowdown\u201d in cargo volumes due to a number of events, including the impact of coronavirus on imports from Asia, said Mike Leonard, president and CEO of the BC Maritime Employers Association.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The Port of Savannah has seen a 20% drop in container business in March. It\u2019s expecting a surge of full containers to sit in storage for at least a short period, as the current lockdown at many U.S. retailers and factories reduces demand, said Georgia Ports Authority Executive Director Griff Lynch.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u201cWe are looking at a very sharp, unprecedented decline in trade, especially because of the speed at which it is happening,\u201d former White House economist Phil Levy said by phone.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u201cIf we are already starting to match Great Recession statistics, that means we are on pace for the modern record,\u201d said Levy, now the chief economist at freight logistics company Flexport Inc.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n As reported cases approach half a million people worldwide, the disease has forced governments to implement nationwide lockdowns that have stalled factories, closed many restaurants and retail shops, and left consumers\u00a0scrambling\u00a0for necessities. The result has been a twin supply-and-demand crisis that\u2019s upended the shipping industry, which transports about 80% of the world\u2019s food, energy, raw materials and manufactured goods.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n A.P. Moller-Maersk A\/S, the world\u2019s largest container line, indicated Thursday in a letter to customers that \u201cthe many conversations we have with you confirm our expectation of lower volume demand in the coming weeks.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Copenhagen-based Maersk repeated that the virus hasn\u2019t had major impact on its ability to operate, saying \u201cgoods continue to flow through our warehouses, terminals and network\u201d as 85% of its global office-based staff works from home.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n But disruptions continue to crop up. On Wednesday, India\u2019s government created uncertainty about how goods will flow in and out of the world\u2019s seventh-largest economy when it told its major ports that the pandemic provides reasonable grounds for invoking force majeure \u2014 a contractual escape clause in the event of natural disasters.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n On Tuesday, the Manila International Port temporarily closed after one of its employees tested positive for the new virus, and the Port of Houston temporarily closed two of its public container terminals last week after an employee contracted the disease.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Few economies have been spared the virus\u2019s wrath \u2014 especially those in Europe, which is currently the epicenter of the global pandemic.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Europe\u2019s largest seaport, in Rotterdam, observed a \u201csignificant\u201d drop in throughput volumes for all cargo flows over the past three months, said Leon Willems, a spokesman for the Port of Rotterdam.<\/p>\n gCaptain<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The Great Recession, the Sept. 11 attacks, the 1973 oil embargo \u2014 none of these modern crises constricted trade flows as quickly and as sharply as the Covid-19 disease has. Not even World War II delivered the kind of sudden economic knockout that is paralyzing global supply chains and rendering almost silent the most bustling …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":6921,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[56],"tags":[3833,3834,1280,1406,2221,1913,1185,1448],"class_list":["post-6920","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-marine-world","tag-collapse","tag-generation","tag-hit","tag-sees","tag-trade","tag-virus","tag-world","tag-worst"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.al-sindbad.net\/rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6920","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.al-sindbad.net\/rest\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.al-sindbad.net\/rest\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.al-sindbad.net\/rest\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.al-sindbad.net\/rest\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6920"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.al-sindbad.net\/rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6920\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.al-sindbad.net\/rest\/wp\/v2\/media\/6921"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.al-sindbad.net\/rest\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6920"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.al-sindbad.net\/rest\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6920"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.al-sindbad.net\/rest\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6920"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}