BDRY - Despite Unprecedented Shock To World Trade Shipping Lines Maintain High Freight Rates
By Stuart Burns
The shipping industry's woes started before the current pandemic.
Trade tensions between the U.S. and China had depressed demand throughout 2019. On a longer time frame, a trend to nearshoring or onshoring and the rise of automation were both creating headwinds for the unfettered growth of globalization on which the global shipping industry depends.
Indeed, the industry has benefited from an almost unbroken run of increasing seaborne container freight volumes over the last four decades, a recent Financial Times article reports.
(Source: Financial Times)
Even the 2008-2009 global financial