For transportation providers understanding short-, medium- and long-term regulatory impacts on country-to-country flows is fundamental to network and fleet decisions across all transportation modes. For example, as China has grown its share of world non-bulk trade from around 11% in 2010 to about a quarter in 2023. To support this growth container shipping lines have invested in significantly larger ships. More and more freighters are being deployed to fly freight out of China. A shift to more intra-regional trade would require different capacity – smaller vessels, less planes, more trucks and provide increased opportunities for growth of rail services. Less trade overall would mean lower demand for capacity overall. Looming steep tariff increases are a legitimate cause for fear, but changes in the world trading system have been unfolding over many years. This article provides some thoughts on how to think about the impact of tariffs in the context of how supply chains have been evolving over the past 20 years.
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