Over the past decades world ocean trade has expanded almost exponentially as major manufacturing outsourcing from USA and European corporations has blossomed under the advent of economic globalization. The result has been that Asia, most especially China, has become the essential manufacturing source for everything from iPhones to antibiotics and everything in-between. The creation of the World Trade Organization to impose new rules on the trade has been a key driver. It has also made global supply chains for delivering goods more fragile than ever in history. The rise in cost of ocean container shipping indicates the growing crisis. Compounding the growing crisis are enormous labor shortages owing to global COVID measures.
Origins of the Crisis
According to German-based Statista Research Department,
some 80 percent of all goods globally are carried by sea including oil, coal, grains. Of that total, in terms of value, global maritime container trade accounts for some 60 percent of all seaborne trade, valued at around 14 trillion US dollars in 2019. This ocean shipping has become the arteries of the world economy for better or worse.
This is a direct consequence of the 1990's creation of the WTO with new rules favoring out-sourcing of manufacture to countries where production was far cheaper, that is as long as ocean transport was cheap. After China became a WTO member in 2001, they became the greatest beneficiary of the new rules and within a decade China was called the "workshop of the world." Entire industries such as electronics, pharmaceuticals, textiles, chemicals as well as plastics were transferred to China with then the world's lowest wages, for factory assembly.
It worked because the cost of shipping to Western markets was comparatively low.
Comment: Despite the sneering tone of the article, Mr. Lindell has marshalled a bevy of experts and an impressive pile of evidence that he is correct about the fraudulent election. Whether or not that will be enough to overturn it is another matter, given that multiple courts have dismissed previous lawsuits on technicalities, before any evidence could be presented. What is odd and unsettling is that many Republican party members are impeding Lindell whenever possible. Apparently Trump is unacceptable to Washington swamp critters on both sides of the aisle.