How Panama Canal navigated COVID, drought and trade war

This extremely interesting article details what’s happening at the Panama Canal in terms of ocean shipping trade. I learned a lot from it.

For instance, containers are a small part of the trade through the Canals, both the Panamax and NeoPanamax (deepwater, for the larger ships) routes. The largest part is bulk, grains, coal and oil and LNG.

And the majority of the trade in 2020 is Pacific to Atlantic, not Atlantic to Pacific.

Since there’s a lot of export of these commodities, particularly agricultural and oil-based, from the Gulf Coast of the US to Asia, Canal traffic is a good measure of US international trade of these.

Altogether a good read.

Greg Miller, Senior Editor Thursday, October 15, 2020

How Panama Canal navigated COVID, drought and trade war – FreightWaves