Will Higher Shipping Costs Kill World Trade?

What is causing higher shipping costs?

Higher than what? When?

Right now fuel oil is at a 5 year low and the trend has it going still much lower.

The current financial crisis will lower world trade but it will not kill it.

I think there are two reasons to trade over long distances. The one going back to antiquity of course is to get things you can't get nearby. With cheap energy it became feasible to exploit cheap labor in faraway places to get similar products at a cheaper price. This ultimately is a bad thing for the environment since it also exploits cheap energy reserves.

As energy becomes more expensive this trend will reverse and we will go back to relying on long distance trade for things that simply are unavailable locally. As long as we are dependent on finite energy reserves, this is the wisest plan. Not that what is most prudent has anything to do with how greedy humans conduct their affairs.

Unfortunately, greed tends to corrupt any logical scheme we devise, given the opportunity.

The low fuel prices are helping to keep the financial crises some what at bay. High prices would compound the whole mess.

Brad

was this article published several monthes ago? doesnt the journalist noticed that the petroleum price is going down largely?

less orders wwere contracted in boatyard from now on. because less things to be shipping

If the cost is too expensive in one store then you go to the next store. Why did we end up in China in the first place? Because America was too expensive. Maybe the worm is turning?

Take Ireland...about ten years ago any 800 tech support call here in the US would get you an Irish operator. Now that the Irish economy has taken off the cost of the tech support became too expensive and the computer corporations shifted to India and Poland for the labor force. All pricing seems to go East and beacuse we live on a round thingy, it will eventually come back to the US.