Warning From The World’s Biggest Shipping Line On Outlook for World Trade

The optimism on world trade didn’t last very long.
It was only late September when the WTO issued a ‘strong upward revision’ to their estimate for 2017 world trade. WTO economists raised their forecast to 3.6% from 2.4%, which was at the top end of the previous 1.8-3.6% range. This marked a sharp acceleration from the 1.3% growth in 2016. The IMF’s forecast for 2017 world trade, also made in September, was even higher at 4.2%. Now the Copenhagen-based Maersk, the world’s number one container shipping company, is sounding a warning about softer demand and downward pressure on freight rates. According to Bloomberg.
The world’s largest container shipping line says international freight rates are reversing after climbing for most of this year, raising questions about the sustainability of the global trade recovery. Decade-old oversupply issues swamped demand for containerized sea trade in the third quarter, a senior official at Maersk Line Ltd. said in an interview last week. Over 90 percent of trade is routed through ships, making the industry a bellwether for the worldwide economy. “We have started to see some pockets of downward pressure,” said Steve Felder, Mumbai-based managing director of Maersk’s South Asian unit. The global trade order book at around 13.5 percent of capacity isn’t high, “however, given that freight rates are largely determined on the basis of supply-demand balance, they remain fragile,” he said.

This post was published at Zero Hedge on Dec 12, 2017.