Megaships: a threat to world trade?
Barbecues, trainers, iPads, TVs, fridges... how does all the stuff we buy get to us? Until last week, few of us were aware that 90% of the world’s traded goods are carried by sea, said Amanda Mull in The Atlantic. Then the Ever Given – one of the largest ships on Earth – drifted sideways in high wind as it made its way through the Suez Canal, en route from ports in China to Rotterdam, and blocked this vital trade route ( see page 51). Stacked high with up to 18,000 containers holding goods worth an estimated $1bn, the 400-metre-long ship sat there, while scores of other vast boats, transporting everything from crude oil and car parts to livestock, backed up behind it. As concern grew about the impact of these delays on a global economy already hard hit by the pandemic, dredgers moved 30,000 cubic metres of sand in an effort to dislodge the ship; and on Monday, it was freed. But images of it, beached like a whale, remain a potent visual metaphor for the “frailty” of a complex system that our modern world has come to depend on.
The shipping industry is virtually as old as trade itself – but the modern one only dates back to the 1950s, when a US haulier realised that rather than loading and unloading lorries, it would be quicker to put their trailers straight onto ships, said Marc Levinson in The Times. By the 1980s, container ships had become dominant, and with transport costs falling, firms realised they could increase profits by making consumer goods and components in poor countries, to sell and assemble in rich ones. In 2016, it was estimated that it cost less than ten cents to ship a pair of trainers from Indonesia to Italy. Meanwhile, more and more firms adopted “just in time” supply chain models which rely on speedy deliveries from overseas factories – and shippers built ever bigger boats to maximise the revenue from this booming trade. Now, as we saw last week, some are just too big for the marine infrastructure, said Michael Safi in The Guardian – leaving the “overall supply chain” dangerously exposed.
A year ago, shortages of PPE created public anxiety about globalisation, and the long supply chains that underpin it, said the FT. But thanks to the sophistication of modern logistics (and the efforts of a 1.6 million-strong army of seafarers), shelves remained stocked; online deliveries kept coming. Politicians talk of bringing jobs home, and securing national supplies; but events as dramatic as a “megaship” blocking the Suez Canal are still rare. Now that the Ever Given has been refloated, landlubbers will once again forget about the complexities of the “shadowy sector” that keeps their world turning.