In the past few days, the 12th strong typhoon "Meihua" head-on, touching the nerves of all parties. With strong typhoons are also concerned about the recent "fall" of the shipping market.


  Thanks to the obvious cost advantage, the current global shipping volume in the total trade transportation accounted for more than 90%, and container shipping as one of the most important shipping methods, its trade amount accounted for more than 80% of the amount of maritime trade, the global trade has a huge impact.


  According to public data, the latest Shanghai Export Container Composite Tariff Index released by Shanghai Shipping Exchange was 2562.12 points, down 10% from the previous period, and has been falling for 13 consecutive weeks. In addition, the Deloitte World Container Tariff Index (WCI) has been declining for 28 consecutive weeks, and the Baltic Dry Index is currently at a low level within the past two years.

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  Generally speaking, the third quarter is the traditional peak season of global maritime container transport, shipping prices will also be "water up", why this year, shipping prices not only no seasonal rise, but also a rare continuous decline? For once suffered from "a box hard to find" of China's foreign trade enterprises, this decline will be to reduce the cost of import and export logistics is good?


  Is not good, not only to see what is the real reason for the decline in sea freight, but also a comprehensive consideration of the magnitude of its decline, only moderate decline in freight rates, to help remove the global shipping market "false fire".


  Since this year, the global container transport market overall continued since the second half of last year, container shipping prices reached the peak at the beginning of this year began to fluctuate, especially by the high inflation rate in Europe and the United States, geopolitical conflicts in some regions, the continued spread of the epidemic and other factors, the global shipping market demand has shrunk significantly. In addition, the international capacity allocation imbalance, shipbuilding market orders reduced, etc. also had a certain impact on shipping prices.


  It should be noted that this round of shipping prices continue to fall, in a sense, is also on last year's shipping prices "abnormally high" stage retracement, in favor of the soaring freight prices back to a relatively reasonable price level. That is to say, at present, the international shipping price moderate decline is reasonable, but the continued plunge or even a precipitous decline, and is not conducive to the healthy development of the entire shipping market. Although the cost of shipping is not the highest proportion of the overall cost of foreign trade, but the sharp fluctuations in freight rates will certainly be transmitted to the foreign trade market, and then affect the smooth operation of the entire foreign trade industry chain supply chain.


  Sea freight plunge for foreign trade impact geometry, it is still too early to conclude. On the surface, the shipping market shrinkage is the direct cause of the plunge in sea freight, but the deep-seated reason also lies in the change of foreign demand market. Compared with the explosive growth of the container shipping market last year, the first half of this year, although its market growth rate has declined, but the overall container shipping trade volume is still at a high level of the market. However, since the third quarter, Europe and the United States and other countries continue to increase inflationary pressure, resulting in its market demand continues to decline, coupled with a large number of previously hoarded inventory is still to be digested, many importers had to reduce or even cancel orders for goods, the future "order shortage" or will further highlight.

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  China Council for the Promotion of International Trade, a questionnaire results show that the vast majority of foreign trade enterprises believe that currently facing the difficulties of reduced orders. The latest China Manufacturing Purchasing Managers' Index (PMI) was 49.4%, up 0.4 percentage points from the previous month, but still below the Rongkuk line, indicating that market demand is still relatively weak. With the high temperature, drought and other extreme weather is alleviated, PMI is expected to rebound, but the traditional overseas markets have entered the end of inventory replenishment, foreign demand in the fourth quarter is likely to maintain a weak trend, or will pull down the overall growth of foreign trade.


  Overall, the current and future period, China's foreign trade is facing an obvious increase in risk challenges. In this context, the State Council executive meeting recently launched a number of targeted policy initiatives, from the new cross-border e-commerce comprehensive pilot zone, smooth foreign trade enterprises to grasp the order channel, for small and medium-sized foreign trade enterprises to provide exchange rate hedge and cross-border RMB settlement services, to further strengthen the foundation of stable growth of foreign trade. For the majority of foreign trade enterprises, shipping costs should certainly be concerned about the rise and fall, but the urgent task is still to continue to use the policy dividend, to improve the supply chain layout and market expansion to reduce costs and increase efficiency, to more advantageous product power to build and upgrade to enhance competitiveness.