last year, the transatlantic headway trade, demand and rate levels from europe to north america continued to grow, essentially transatlantic routes have replaced trans-pacific routes as the most profitable trade routes. The capacity of container ships deployed on the transatlantic route has exceeded demand, but continued congestion at ports on both sides of the Atlantic is providing support for the route's freight rates.

Chronic congestion in U.S. West Coast ports led shippers to shift Asian imports from the West Coast to the East Coast gateway earlier this year. But far from improving cargo flows, the sudden increase in freight traffic quickly flooded ports such as Savannah and Charleston.

in fact, the problem of port congestion has not been fully resolved since the outbreak. Port congestion has absorbed capacity and limited space, forcing spot and contract prices on transatlantic trade to record levels.

What is different from last year is that the port congestion is not accompanied by the continued soaring freight rates, but by the continuous half-year decline in freight rates, the rise in demand is not as expected, and the port is faced with utopian pressure.

"There is no doubt that the world is currently in an oversupply of containers. It is not a port, but there are more containers in the world," explained Xu Kai, chief information officer of the Shanghai International Shipping Research Center. "In the past, we had to ship empty containers back because of the large amount of exported goods and the small amount of imported goods. Now other countries can't pile them up, so they have to ship them to us."

the second half of 2022, spot freight rates have fallen sharply and are now well below contract freight rates. Xeneta's data show signs that contract freight rates are beginning to decline. A large proportion of contracts will need to be renewed in the first half of the year, and spot freight rates in the signing season will have a huge impact on contract freight rates. The reduction in contract freight rates will vary by liner company, route, and spot-to-contract ratio. MSI does not expect contracted freight rates to fall back to pre-epidemic levels.

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) believes that the possibility of a further slowdown in the global economy is increasing. Global economic growth will slow to 2.7 in 2023. It is expected that about 1/3 of the world's economies will experience economic contraction in 2023.

now, global shipping prices continue last year's decline. After a slight rebound at the end of last year, the Shanghai Export Container Freight Index fell 4.2 per cent on New Year's Day and returned to decline. The Baltic Dry Index plunged 17.5 percent on Tuesday, its biggest one-day drop since 1984.

the domestic epidemic control policy will be further liberalized in 2023, the efficiency of the logistics supply chain will be further restored, but the global economic slowdown and the sharp decline in demand in Europe and the United States, which will lead to low growth in global container trade. New year's shipping market new ship launch pressure is greater, the market is difficult to have a significant upward momentum.