Maersk’s head says global trade with rates could take decades

Unlock Free

Roula Khalaf, publisher of the FT, selects her favorite stories in this weekly newsletter.

U.S. President Donald Trump would be needed, “a decade or two persistent efforts” to redraw the world -class supply chains with rates, warned the head of the world’s largest container sending group in the world.

Vincent Clerc, CEO of AP Møller Maersk, told The Financial Times that commercial volumes between the United States and China had dropped 30-40 percent in April as a result of Trump’s rates, but other routes, such as between Asia and other emerging markets, had remained strong.

“Today’s supply chain around the world is something that has been built over decades. If you want to increase -or change it deep, it will take decades,” he said. “It takes time for companies to make decisions, to build factories. It is very unrealistic that supply chains are changed very quickly due to rates.”

Maersk is a bell tower for world trade, transporting one in five containers through the sea and its Views to supply chains They look closely.

The Danish group warned on Thursday that world trade could hire this year, reducing its prior forecast for the growth of container demand from about 4 % to a range of less than 1 % to 4 %.

“Today is rugged. But so far it mainly affects China-EUA relationships and volumes,” said Clerc.

He added that China-EUA trade represented about 5 percent of Maersk volumes, so the fall so far was around 2 % of its total. “We responded by moving almost 20 percent of our capacity in China-EUA on other routes, especially in the East East to other emerging markets. It has been proven to be good,” he said.

Maersk’s CEO said that the biggest threat could be the impact of the economy’s rates. “If things are encompassed, inflation continues to increase and we see a risk of recession in the United States, volumes will suffer in the second half. Our role in Maersk is to support our customers through this ordeal,” added Clerc.

Trump has expressed a repeated desire from North -American companies to return their manufacture at home and that foreign groups have more North -American production.

But Clerc was skeptical, arguing that the United States lacked labor. “There is no snowboarding boots out of China. If you want to change this, time will take, or you need to stop snowboarding. It would not overestimate the weight that the United States have in terms of world trade,” he added.

Talks between US and Chinese officials as well as the planned signature of a US-UK trade agreement On Thursday, they were “good signs” of potential de -escalation, said Maersk’s CEO.

His comments came as Maersk informed The results of the first quarter ahead of the expectations of the analysts maintained their orientation for a whole year.

Income increased by 8 percent to $ 13.3 million, and operational profit increased more than seven times to $ 1.2 million. Maersk hopes to get an underlying operating profit from zero to $ 3 million this year.