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Inflation incoming, with a bit of an explanatory chain
One of my discoveries in 2023 is that podcasts and low-visual-impact videos do have a niche in my life after all. So I've started listening to a bunch of "professor's side gig/hobby project" things when I'm doing other boring tasks. I'd still much rather read, but for stuff I don't need to remember in great detail, audio is good enough.
One of those academic's side projects is "What's Going On With Shipping", and right now, that's A Lot. Back in November, a group called the Houthi (the Iran-backed faction in the Yemeni civil war) declared they would blockade the narrows between the Red Sea and the Arabian Sea against any commercial vessel "connected to Israel", and backed it up by seizing the Ray Shipping vessel Galaxy Leader, of which one of the beneficial owners is an Israeli. (Galaxy Leader's crew are still being held hostage.) So far, the targets have gone out to at least three degrees of separation in terms of who does business with / is owned by whom. Or the Houthi's intelligence gathering could just be shit. Not mutually exclusive.
The above has made not just the shipping companies themselves but also the providers of war risk insurance very skittish. So the big container ships, with their massive cargo value and associated cost to insure, have been diverting away from the Red Sea <-> Suez Canal <-> Mediterranean Sea section of route. Combine that with a drought throttling the Panama Canal (which is currently allowing 24 of the normal 38 ships per day to pass through) and moving cargo between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans is becoming a right pain in the ass. Slower, more expensive, and since part of the change is sudden, also disruptive to supply chains.
Those costs in shipping, insurance, and manufacturing delays are all passed on to us, the consumers. Prices go up, available product goes down, everything goes 'round and 'round.
One of those academic's side projects is "What's Going On With Shipping", and right now, that's A Lot. Back in November, a group called the Houthi (the Iran-backed faction in the Yemeni civil war) declared they would blockade the narrows between the Red Sea and the Arabian Sea against any commercial vessel "connected to Israel", and backed it up by seizing the Ray Shipping vessel Galaxy Leader, of which one of the beneficial owners is an Israeli. (Galaxy Leader's crew are still being held hostage.) So far, the targets have gone out to at least three degrees of separation in terms of who does business with / is owned by whom. Or the Houthi's intelligence gathering could just be shit. Not mutually exclusive.
The above has made not just the shipping companies themselves but also the providers of war risk insurance very skittish. So the big container ships, with their massive cargo value and associated cost to insure, have been diverting away from the Red Sea <-> Suez Canal <-> Mediterranean Sea section of route. Combine that with a drought throttling the Panama Canal (which is currently allowing 24 of the normal 38 ships per day to pass through) and moving cargo between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans is becoming a right pain in the ass. Slower, more expensive, and since part of the change is sudden, also disruptive to supply chains.
Those costs in shipping, insurance, and manufacturing delays are all passed on to us, the consumers. Prices go up, available product goes down, everything goes 'round and 'round.
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I wandered into the rabbit hole of 'logistics at scale' after you recommended Wendover to your readers, IIRC near the start of the 2021 Russian invasion of Ukraine. Between the eclectic subjects that Wendover covers, Sal at WGOWShipping talking about current and historical merchant marine stuff (as a civilian mariner turned historian), and PerunAU doing what the author/narrator himself calls "Powerpoint presentations about defense economics", I've been surprised by how fascinating the subject is once one has the right context for all the crunchy bits.
One of the things on my to-post list is a selection of the channels I've found most interesting to listen to over the past year or so. (Watch this space.)