TLDR: The global shipping snarlups that have become endemic during the last two years of Covid worsened dramatically during March because of the added complications from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the growing (and hard) lockdowns of Shanghai and other manufacturing and shipping centres in China.
Sadly, the slowdown in trade and global growth is coming just as the US Federal Reserve is ramping up its monetary policy tightening to crunch inflationary expectations. The combination is now raising fears of a US recession and global stocks and bonds are selling off sharply. Paid subscribers can see more on the global trade slowdown news overnight and my analysis below the paywall fold.
In news elsewhere overnight:
Ukraine urged citizens in the eastern Kharkiv, Luhansk and Donetsk regions to evacuate ahead of a fresh Russian onslaught as troops withdrawn from around Kyiv amass for fresh attacks in the east (BBC);
the United States and United Kingdom announced fresh sanctions on Russia’s two biggest banks operating overseas and Vladimir Putin’s two daughters, but the measures still exempt payments for oil and gas (Reuters);
the minutes of the last US Federal Reserve policy meeting were released in the last two hours, showing the Fed plans to ramp up its ‘Quantitative Tightening’ programme of bond sales to US$95b a month, which accelerated a selloff in global stocks and bonds (CNBC); and,
Immigration NZ has been flooded with applications for ‘one off’ residency visas by 170,000 people only half way through the application process, meaning the total residencies granted could be substantially higher than the 165,000 predicted (NZ Herald)
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