By coinnews 
00:00 Speaker A
Well, a new era is ahead for the global freight market amid President Trump’s trade policies from changes to the labor force to supply chain risk. There’s a lot to keep track of and shipping and transportation. Craig Fuller, Freight Waves founder and CEO, joins us now to discuss. Craig, it is good to see you. Uh, so listen, maybe just start at high, a high level, Craig, because obviously you know the freight logistics market as well as anybody. What are you seeing, Craig, in terms of of voyages and freight? What are the themes? What are the trends?
00:47 Craig Fuller
Yeah, there’s been a significant drop in volume from China. Uh, and that’s starting to show up in the United States. So if you think about, uh, really since liberation day, since they went into effect on April 9th, we’ve seen a 60% drop in uh, outbound cargo out of China headed to the United States. And in terms of what we’re seeing right now, that cargo that would have been here is now uh, showing up or not showing up the United States. And so over the next two weeks, we expect a 35% drop in year-over-year cargos uh, into the port of Southern California. So this is port of Long Beach and port of LA. And that will uh, actually start to uh, show up in the rest of the country, uh, in terms of a lack of cargo, uh, over the next couple of weeks.
02:08 Speaker A
Well, that’s where I want to get to, Craig. If retailers, for example, are taking in, you know, less inventory, when would the consumer expect to see that on their local store shelves? When am I going to really see that? Is that going to be, is that more, because I’ve heard different estimates. I mean, I’ve heard summer, I’ve heard fall, but what do you see?
02:39 Craig Fuller
Yeah, it’s going to be intermittent, so you may go to the store and have a a certain product that you uh, normally purchase, a brand, it may not be there. So it could be everything over the counter medicine, to batteries, to apparel. You may go to the stores and the stuff that you normally buy just aren’t in stock. Uh, there may be an alternative brand. Um, as we, and that’s really the first part, that’s really June and July is that’s where it’s more likely to show up. As we move into the calendar, back to school is about the first time that I would expect most people in America would likely see inventory stock outs. And so this is when mom is getting her uh, stuff, her kids ready for school, backpacks, school supplies, things that they normally go to buy will not be in, will be in selection. That’s when I think most consumers will realize it. As we move further into the calendar, as we move towards Halloween and Christmas, this is all dependent on how fast we or if we get a deal. So if we get one in the next month, then really Christmas is saved. If not, I’d be really concerned about uh, having an enormous amount of goods that aren’t in stores for the holidays.
04:30 Speaker A
And Craig, how many people roughly work in logistics across the country? And how at risk do you think if this continues would some of those jobs be? And where would the risk be, Craig? Would it be, you know, truckers? Would it be dock workers?
04:55 Craig Fuller
Well, I’d say the risk is all of the above. There are nine million people who work in transportation in the United States, transportation logistics, moving freight, moving cargo. So when we look at the amount of volume that is related, directly related to imports, it’s 20% of domestic trucking volume is directly related to imports. And so if we think about what that means dropping off as much cargo as we we’ve we currently don’t have or or don’t expect to have, is we’re expecting to lose 5 to 6% of total trucking volume over the next month. And that means you would likely see a roughly equivalent amount of job losses. Trucking and logistics is an industry which doesn’t get a lot of benefits of scale in terms of human capital. As there’s more volume, you add more people. And so we think about losing uh, 5 to 6% of the of nine million people that work in this industry, we’re looking at 400 to 450,000 jobs that are really at risk.