Navigating Global Trade Challenges: New Inefficiencies Emerge, but Trade Resilience Prevails in 2024

New inefficiencies but trade unlikely to be derailed

Global trade has entered a phase of low growth following economic headwinds, geopolitical tensions and increasing protectionism. Trade growth may even lag global GDP growth for longer than expected. Trade patterns have also been disrupted over the last two years following sanctions on Russia, which led to big shifts in imports and exports of commodities and vessels sailing longer routes, especially in tanker shipping. Current detours add to already historically long routes in trade and introduce new inefficiencies. Falling container rates have long been positive for trade since 2022, and current increases reverse some of that, but as mentioned previously rates and ocean timelines for shipments are nowhere near peak levels. Shippers are looking into options for shift sourcing and nearshoring to reduce risk, but we’ve also seen that (underlying) interdependencies remain strong and companies continue to trade if potential benefits surpass costs. All in all, we stick to our forecast that merchant trade will grow 2.5% year-on-year in 2024 compared to the low competitive base of 2023.