About this episode

Sal Mercogliano discusses the impact of the Middle East shipping crisis on global trade and shipping costs.

Just a few weeks ago, the tense situation in the Middle East reached a boiling point when the U.S. and Israel launched an attack on Iran. Now, as the effects of the conflict ripple across the world, everyone has the same question: How will this affect global trade? Sal Mercogliano, maritime shipping expert and host of the YouTube channel What’s Going On With Shipping?, joins Lori to help answer that question. Sal shares a nuanced analysis of how the crisis has already affected shipping and what will happen going forward. How has the conflict in the Middle East affected shipping? To understand why the war in Iran will have such a major impact on shipping, you first need to understand choke points. Sal describes them as “narrow little areas where [ocean] traffic funnels together.” And one of the biggest choke points in the world is the Strait of Hormuz, where the Persian Gulf meets the Indian Ocean. Sal explains, “Since the United States and Israel struck Iran … shipping has stopped going through.” And unfortunately, “There's no shortcut here. There's no … ‘Let's go around the Persian Gulf.’ You can't. You've got to go through the strait.” This bottleneck will result in higher…

People in this episode

Host: Lori

Guest: Sal Mercogliano

Topics covered

• Middle East shipping crisis
• global trade
• maritime shipping
• oil supply
• choke points
• shipping costs

Keywords

• shipping crisis
• global trade
• oil supply
• Strait of Hormuz
• maritime expert

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: What’s Going On With Shipping?

Places: Middle East, Iran, Strait of Hormuz, Persian Gulf, Indian Ocean, United States, Nigeria, Venezuela

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