This summer edition offers much informative content for Canadian policymakers, shippers, transportation providers and port officials seeking to best navigate through various persistent geopolitical conflicts, slower global growth and the latest world disorder creations of U.S. President Donald Trump. Increasingly, trade diversification has become the new mantra for more Canadian exporters, though just pure geography and economic reality dictate that the United States will always remain Canada’s leading trade partner.
Readers will be particularly interested in the annual, in-depth feature written by our Vancouver correspondent Colin Laughlan on the current evolution of Canada-Indo Pacific trade. Here, indeed, there is evidence of trade diversification taking hold with the world’s fastest-growing region – a strategy strongly supported by the Carney federal government. Colin, in addition, reports on an important new shortsea shipping initiative by DP World on the West Coast.
In keeping with a tradition by Maritime Magazine of several decades, this edition also contains a comprehensive overview of cargo trends, infrastructure investments, and other developments at ports across Canada to strengthen supply chain capacities and their overall competitiveness vis-a-vis mounting challenges for North American traffic from their counterparts to the south.
Finally, the Editor’s First Watch column recounts a rather astonishing adventure launched by Lars Jensen, a widely-acclaimed expert from Denmark on container shipping. Driving his seemingly indestructible 1987 Volkswagen van – named Synchro Sally – Lars left from Copenhagen on June 30 on a “logistics safari” that will take him to 41 countries in Africa until the end of 2027. He regards Africa as “the largest growing market for freight in the next 25 years.”