The restrictions imposed by the Chinese authorities on Shanghai’s 26 million residents due to a new surge in Covid cases could deliver a new shock to world trade by sea. The Chinese megalopolis is indeed the main planetary hub for container ships, but the port’s activities risk complete paralysis due to staff shortages (end of lockdown) and very strict health regulations. The number of sea giants waiting to load or unload goods has reached 500 units in the last few days and then started to decline very slowly. The risk of this is the impact on all global supply chains.
The Bloomberg site has calculated a maximum peak of 477 container ships that docked at Shanghai and other ports in the region on April 11 last year; Congestion then eased, but only slightly, as shipping companies tried to direct their ships to other commercial ports. Just for comparison, during the 2021 lockdowns, the number of ships blocked in Shanghai never exceeds 200; So this time around, the impact on global trade could be much stronger if the Chinese authorities don’t relax the restrictions inspired by the Covidzero policy.
Stationary ships mainly transport raw materials (especially metals and grain): the slowdown affects loading and unloading operations, bureaucratic procedures, but also land transport. Permits for trucks entering and exiting the port area are only valid for 24 hours, but the waiting time for drivers often exceeds 40 hours, complicating the whole chain. Over 4 million tons of cargo pass through Shanghai, the world’s largest commercial port, every year.
A chain of events has complicated all planetary container traffic. First Covid, then the sudden increase in global demand due to the reopening of trade routes and finally the war in Ukraine have pushed up prices, which have risen by 400500% since 2019. According to a study by Intesa San Paolo, an expedition you paid $1,400 for in 2019 had reached 7,500 in 2021. And in 2019, the journey of a container ship from the west coast of the United States to Shanghai took an average of 39 days, two years later it was 68.