[R-G] Shipping Costs Start to Crimp Globalization

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

<http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/03/business/worldbusiness/03global.html>
August 3, 2008
Shipping Costs Start to Crimp Globalization
By LARRY ROHTER

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The cost of shipping a 40-foot container from Shanghai to the United
States has risen to $8,000, compared with $3,000 early in the decade,
according to a recent study of transportation costs. Big container
ships, the pack mules of the 21st-century economy, have shaved their
top speed by nearly 20 percent to save on fuel costs, substantially
slowing shipping times.

The study, published in May by the Canadian investment bank CIBC World
Markets, calculates that the recent surge in shipping costs is on
average the equivalent of a 9 percent tariff on trade. "The cost of
moving goods, not the cost of tariffs, is the largest barrier to
global trade today," the report concluded, and as a result "has
effectively offset all the trade liberalization efforts of the last
three decades."