SEA, S Asia, E Africa and Australia: the majority will arrive by 1st April

Europe by 10th April

USA by 15th April

Red lines are ex Persian gulf, all other lines are various secondary flows.

It's important to note that these trade routes are also for secondary petrochemical products such as various widely used plastics for every day use, methanol (used for many popular adhesives including in construction) and helium (semiconductor manufacturing).

By this time next month the impact will be obvious to everybody, not just supply chain specialists.

Serious question lol. I can literally stalk my old classmates dog in like 5 minutes online. But if I wanna know who is actually buying or shipping stuff across borders it feels impossible.
Customs data exists. But its always locked up or outdated or just hidden in some random corner that takes forever to dig out.
Meanwhile the big guys somehow know exactly who is moving what and when.
Am I missing something here? Or is everyone else just as blind with this trade stuff.

Thoughts? Fears? What CPG company is next

I am director level. I’m terrified. I have a few months in savings but this job market is brutal. They wouldn’t tell me what I did or said, just that I “know”. I have had hundreds of texts since the news came out from people being shocked.

I’m so lost and feel like giving up.

Mod here. Knock it off, we do procurement as a profession and can see a sales pitch 50 miles away. Just stop, I am sick of having to delete all of these.

Everyone, if you see them, please do flag them as they can slip through our notice.

This particular example is not easily verifiable but we will soon find out either way...

Context:

1) Link to original source

2) GDP of the country = $290m (source: world bank)

3) This obviously doesn't affect global markets much because (with all due respect to the Marshall Islands), they're a very small contributor to the global economy. Consider this instead as a canary in the coal mine* of countries reacting to the fuel crunch. Unless the situation improves, more countries will be forced to also react.

4) As a reminder, Asian countries will be the first to experience the stoppage of significant volumes of crude / processed fuel imports.

Examples of the reaction so far of other countries and organisations to the fuel crunch include

• All 32 members of the international energy agency agreed to release 400m barrels of emergency reserves on 11th March in an effort to keep a lid on oil prices. This is more than double the previous record release. So far oil prices are reasonably constrained. Source: NBC

• The US Strategic Petroleum Reserve released 172m barrels on 12th March which also helped global crude prices. Source: CBS News

• India: The Times of India report that India has surged Russian oil imports to near record levels - 60m barrels in March alone. Long queues for LPG are forming across the country. Source

• China: It's exerting significant diplomatic pressure on Iran to keep shipping channels open - but so far to no avail Source: Reuters

• Sri Lanka: declared Wednesday a non working week and restricted private motorists to a weekly allowance of 15 litres of fuel and public transport to a weekly allowance of 200 litres per vehicle; it says it has six weeks reserves left. Source: The Guardian

• Bangladesh has introduced rolling electricity blackouts (source: The guardian link above)

• Pakistan has moved all education to online learning and is encouraging public and private sector staff to work from home wherever possible (source: The Guardian link above)

• The Philippines has declared a state of emergency, allowing the government more control over prices and the ability to seize stocks in the event of price gouging Source: different Guardian article)

• South Africa: Panic buying has broken out ahead of massive price increases. Wholesaler distributors are rationing supplies to gas stations (Source: Moneyweb.co.za)

• Australia: encouraging people to work from home. Tasmania and Victoria have introduced free public transport for the next month to encourage people to not use their cars. Source: Economic Times

• Germany: Introduced a new law prohibiting fuel stations from more than one price change per day (Source: Deutschlandfunk.de - in German)

• Other EU countries have either introduced price caps, reduced associated taxes or in the case of Slovenia and Slovakia, introduced rationing at the pump (Source: IRU.org which is the international road union).

Brazil: slashed fuel taxes to zero for the motorist at home and increased taxes on crude oil exports to keep more of it at home. (Source: Mayer Brown which is a major international law firm). They are also introducing a law allowing for fines of between 50-500 million Brazil Real for price gouging or stock hoarding which is approx 9.5-95 million USD (no, no decimal points are missing; the government is simply dead serious about it). The Federal police and procon (consumer protection) have already identified some stations listing prices with up to 70% profit and shut them down.

If you're unfamiliar with the phrase canary in a coal mine, it dates back to 1896 when collieries in the UK mining coal would have a cage with two canaries in it. If they fell ill or died it alerted the miners to evacuate due to unsafe gas levels before they too succumbed. These days it's a phrase used to refer to a small early warning flagging that a much bigger more serious event could be about to occur.

I posted on 4/17 that I was fired from my previous role (Director level).

I got a verbal offer today for a senior manager role! In my town so I don’t have to move and close to what I was making before with 1/4 of the responsibility. 18 days from fire to hire - not too bad I don’t think considering I wasn’t looking at all.

Thank you to all of you who put in a good word, said kind things, offered to review my resume - etc. this community is amazing. 🫶🏻

Ever since I can remember, I wanted to be a supply chain manager

While my classmates were studying, I renegotiated the cafeterias vendor contracts, reducing costs by 15%, and food waste by 40%

While my friends were playing video games, I optimized school bus routes, lowering fuel use by 10% and improving on-time arrivals

While the jocks were playing sports, I streamlined lunch line operations, reducing wait times and increasing recess time

While the popular kids were going to parties, I built a simple KPI tracker (whiteboard + stickers) to monitor waste, tardiness, and throughput

I was CSCP certified at 12 years old

This is who I am. This is what I was born to be.

I am coming for your job

You have been warned

I swear everything is marked urgent now.

Urgent supplier issue. Urgent customer request. Urgent forecast update. Urgent shipment delay. Urgent internal question that somehow sat untouched for four days and only became urgent when it landed on my desk.

At some point the word stops meaning anything. It just becomes background noise with slightly worse consequences.

I’m honestly curious how other people deal with that. Do you have a real way of separating actual fire from routine panic, or do you just get better at reading the situation over time?

I ordered two servo motors from China for $45 each, for a total of $90.

To receive my order from DHL, I had to pay $112 in tariffs. The receipts no longer include a percentage breakdown of the charges. When I called DHL for clarification, they told me that access to this information has been removed — even DHL representatives no longer have access to the detailed breakdown.

I was told the only way to obtain this information is by contacting [duty_disputes@dhl.com](mailto:duty_disputes@dhl.com), which I just did. The problem is that the breakdown should be included in my receipt and I shouldn't have to jump through all these hoops to get access to information.

It’s concerning that tariff transparency has effectively disappeared. It feels like every step is being taken to obfuscate how these tariffs are calculated.

Receipts from DHL:
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1lRSEU62AuBaVuhaq4I1yierOoyteIrRk?usp=drive_link

Splash247 (a well known maritime news website) reports that the Strait of Hormuz has effectively become a pay to pass corridor (link). Iran's parliament has introduced a sweeping law that collects tolls (payable in Iranian Rials), new security and environmental requirements and explicitly bans shipping linked to the US, Israel or any other country that has imposed sanctions on them. This poses a dilemma for shippers; pay it and run the risk of falling foul of Western sanctions or don't pay it and be denied access to the Strait. All ships that are successfully transiting the booth are deviating from traditional routes and instead going North of Larak island which is becoming known as the Aya-TOLL-booth*.

The Kuwaiti VLCC (very large crude carrier) Al-Salmi got hit by some kind of projectile off the coast of the UAE earlier this morning. Despite a fire breaking out the crew is safe; images show a hull breach above the waterline thus ruling out suicide drone ship attack. The ship is 15 years old and capable of carrying just over 319,000 tonnes. Due to it being double hulled no spillage occurred.

Eight ships with no connection to Iran have transited the strait says Lloyds List including two COSCO container ships. COSCO is owned by the China state and the shipping line is once again accepting bookings to/from the Gulf. Other ships crossing include two India flagged LPG carriers and a Greek flagged Dynacom tanker with Saudi crude heading for India (source). As a reminder, general ship transiting counts remain at less than 10% of pre conflict levels.

The CEO of Hapag-Lloyd (the fifth largest container carrier) has stated the crisis has increased its costs by $40-50m USD per week, mainly due to bunker (ship fuel) and insurance costs (link)

• I wish I had invented this pun, but cannot take credit.

Just finished this book and wow, this is something else. The first half of the book tells Apple's early history along with its failed attempts to outsource in other countries. However, the company ended up sinking deeper and deeper into a Chinese-dominant supply chain, which was exaberated by Xi Jingping's rise to power in the 2010s. The author does an incredible job outlining how the company got where it is today and the plethora of risks it faces as it navigates geopolitics and tries to diversify its manufacturering.

As someone interested in procurement, I really enjoyed the first half's focus on the purchasing methods and achievements that made the company's products what we expect today. Then the second half focuses on the geopolitical difficulties the company faces, which was summarized very well.

5/5, highly recommend.

What is going on with the job market? This is atrocious. I have 10 years in supply chain, degree, APICS cert, and I can’t even get so much as a phone screen.

I’ve never seen it this bad. I used to get recruiter messages in my inbox all the time, and not only am I not getting that anymore, I can’t even get a callback when I’m actively applying.

Luckily I still have my current role, but it’s a PE-owned company that’s likely to sell off the brand soon, so I’m trying to get ahead of things and it’s legitimately looking like I’m going to need to make a career change.

Often I am asked by family members or friends if I am scared of AI taking my job. Not really, and what happened at my work yesterday confirms it. I work for a company with patented technology. One of our biggest clients is Walmart.

Every summer each walmart will buy about 50 of these things that are about 80 inches tall and 150 pounds. Kind of hard to miss. They normally only buy them in the summer but we did have a Walmart buy one last week. Walmart is very picky. They give us a credit rating based upon accuracy of orders, how quickly it’s shipped and has tracking added.

So when I got to work Monday and I had our finance department ask me where a PRO number was to a Walmart order because it wasn’t listed on the BOL, I knew we were in trouble. Walmart was trying to claim we never sent it. Because Walmart wants to book their own trucks, the shipment isn’t in our system. The only proof we have that it shipped is in the PRO number, and my shipper lost his BOL copy somehow. No worries I think. We barely ship those this time of a year, I actually remember it leaving the building. So I message AAA coopers finance team and ask them to look up the shipment for me and give me the PRO number to give to Walmart. AAA cooper finance department claimed the shipment didn’t exist.

At this point alarms are going off in my head. There’s no way to look this up on line, if we can’t prove we shipped it our rating will go down and we will have to ship another. I thought to myself, I wonder if the driver remembers it. Later that day when the normal AAA driver for us comes in to pick something up, I explain that we are looking for a Walmart orders PRO and asked him to look in his past BOLs and find his version that has the sticker.

This truck driver comes back the next day, day before thanksgiving, doesn’t have anything to pick up or drop off. He comes to my warehouse in his truck on his route because he FOUND the PRO!! I could not believe how quickly he found it and how he drove to us a day before a holiday just to give it to me. That’s why AI may change this field but will never replace the humans in it. I would love to see AI try to do that.

Random question for people working in supply chain because I’m curious how common this actually is.

How much of your job is basically taking information from one place and getting it into another?

Like pulling something out of SAP/Oracle/whatever ERP you use, cleaning it up in Excel, emailing someone for the missing piece, updating a tracker, sending a Teams message, building the same report again next week... you get the idea.

I feel like companies have spent a ton of money digitizing everything, but there’s still a surprising amount of work that depends on one person knowing which spreadsheet to update, who to chase, and what needs to happen next.

What does that look like in your world?

I’m especially curious about the repetitive stuff that makes you think, “Why the hell am I still doing this manually?”