Half the Container Capacity Is Back at Suez. Since September, Rates to Europe Fell. Rates to the U.S. Did Not.

The headline version is simple: the Suez Canal is back, so shipping gets cheaper. Under it sit two markets moving in opposite directions. The numbers that say “half back” measure capacity, not boxes, and they come from different datasets. One part of this story, the premium on the U.S. East Coast, nobody we found can explain, and we mark it where it appears.

Two boxes, one week

On Thursday, October 15, the consultancy Drewry priced a 40-foot container from Shanghai to Rotterdam at $3,522. It had risen 6 percent in a week. The same box from Shanghai to New York cost $10,075, down 1 percent.

The next day, the freight analytics firm Xeneta published its own numbers. Far East to North Europe: $3,568 per 40-foot box. Far East to the U.S. East Coast: $11,495. Xeneta said it plainly: “Spot rates into the US East Coast are more than three times those into North Europe.”

Two indexes, one answer. On Drewry’s pair, the New York box cost 2.86 times the Rotterdam box. On Xeneta’s, the East Coast box cost 3.22 times the Europe box, a gap of $7,927. The two indexes measure different things in different ways, so we keep their numbers apart. They agree on the shape.

Now watch the shape move. On September 10, Xeneta had Far East to North Europe at $4,333. By October 16 it was $3,568, down 17.7 percent. Over the same five weeks, Far East to the U.S. East Coast went from $10,955 to $11,495, up 4.9 percent. Far East to the U.S. West Coast went from $7,738 to $8,296, up 7.2 percent.

The latest week ran the other way at the margin. Xeneta’s Europe rate rose 2.5 percent and its East Coast rate slipped 0.1 percent. Drewry wrote: “After 13 consecutive weeks of decline, rates on the Asia-Europe trade route increased this week.” The five-week split stands. The newest week just does not extend it.

These are spot prices, the price of booking space on short notice, and not every importer pays them. We come back to that below.

Before the war with Iran began on February 28, Xeneta had the East Coast box at $2,651 and the Europe box at $2,220. The East Coast cost about 1.2 times Europe. Today it costs more than three times. The ships came back to Suez. The old ratio did not.

What “half back” means

Three numbers get quoted as proof that Suez is reopening. They count three different things.

The first is a schedule. Xeneta counts the weekly container capacity that carriers have scheduled to cross Bab el-Mandeb, the strait at the southern mouth of the Red Sea. On October 5 it stood at 448,273 TEU. A TEU is one twenty-foot container’s worth of space. In August 2023, before ships began going around Africa, the figure was 930,679 TEU. So the schedule is at 48 percent of where it was. Xeneta’s Emily Stausbøll says it “has doubled since 27 August 2026,” which it calls “a major shift in strategy from carriers.”

The second is ships that actually went through. BIMCO, the shipowners’ association, using Clarksons Research data, says capacity on container ships transiting the canal averaged 753,000 TEU a week in the first two weeks of October. In the same weeks of 2023 it was 1,457,000. That is 52 percent, and BIMCO says it is the first time transits have topped half of pre-disruption levels since the Houthi attacks began. Of all the container capacity going by either Suez or the southern tip of Africa, 36 percent used the canal in early October, BIMCO says. The average from 2024 to mid-2026 was 8 percent. Before the attacks it was about 80.

The third is big ships. The Suez Canal Authority says 166 medium and ultra-large container ships, over 130,000 net tons each, transited between July and September, against 16 in the same quarter of 2025. That count covers only the largest ships.

So do not read these as three sources agreeing. Two separate datasets each put the canal at about half of 2023. The third shows the biggest ships passing in far larger numbers than a year earlier.

What the canal buys is time. Routing through the Red Sea instead of around the Cape of Good Hope “can cut transit time by 11 days on a typical service,” Xeneta’s Peter Sand said in September, measured on a China to Genoa run. The French carrier CMA CGM led the return, according to the trade site MarineRadar. In September, Maersk and Hapag-Lloyd said four of their joint Gemini services would move from the Cape route to the Red Sea, with the first westbound sailings planned for September 19 and 21.

Why one canal moves the world’s prices

The Suez Canal is the short road between Asia and Europe. In 2023 it handled roughly 12 to 15 percent of global trade, according to UNCTAD, the UN’s trade and development body. For containers its weight is bigger. “For container shipping, it’s even more important: 20 percent of the world’s container trade goes through the Suez Canal,” UNCTAD’s Jan Hoffmann told reporters in January 2024.

When a road that important closes, the world finds out how long the detour is. It has closed before, more than once.

1956. On July 26, 1956, Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser announced the nationalization of the Suez Canal Company. Israel attacked across the Sinai Peninsula on October 29. By November 6, the United States had pressed Britain and France to accept a UN ceasefire, according to the U.S. State Department’s historians. As the fighting went on, sunken ships sealed the canal for months. The canal authority dates the reopening to March 29, 1957, after the wrecks were cleared.

1967 to 1975. The canal authority says navigation stopped on June 5, 1967, when the 1967 Arab-Israeli war began, and that the canal reopened on June 5, 1975. Eight years to the day. More than a dozen cargo ships were stranded midway, in the Great Bitter Lake, when it shut. A magazine account of the 1975 reopening, in Saudi Aramco World, said the canal had earned Egypt $220 million a year in foreign exchange before it shut. The same article recorded an argument. It reported the view that years of disuse and the arrival of supertankers had made the canal obsolete. Egypt and the canal authority answered that the rising cost of building, running and insuring supertankers had begun to cancel out their economies of scale soon after 1970. A Gulf News retrospective this year ties the long closure to the rise of very large crude carriers, tankers big enough to make the long haul pay. That is a story about oil tankers. We found no source tying the closure to the growth of container ships, so we do not make that claim.

2021. On March 23, 2021, the container ship Ever Given wedged itself diagonally across the canal in a sandstorm. It took a six-day effort to pull it free. While it was still stuck, the shipping journal Lloyd’s List estimated the blockage was holding up about $9.6 billion of cargo a day: about $5.1 billion westbound and $4.5 billion eastbound. Lloyd’s List itself called those “rough calculations.” A shipping agent, GAC, citing the canal authority, said 437 ships were waiting when it reopened. Other outlets printed other counts.

2023 to 2026. About six weeks after the October 7, 2023 attack on Israel, Yemen’s Houthis seized a British-owned cargo ship in the Red Sea. Al Jazeera called it the start of a sustained campaign of missile and drone attacks on commercial shipping. By January 7, 2024, the analysts at Linerlytica counted 354 container ships, carrying 16.4 percent of the global fleet’s capacity, going around Africa instead. That was 80 percent of the box ships moving between the Atlantic and Mediterranean on one side and the Indian Ocean on the other. UNCTAD said trade volume through the canal fell 42 percent in two months, and weekly container ship transits fell 67 percent. The detour added 10 to 14 days. By mid-September 2024, average daily transits through the canal were 29, against about 80 in October 2023, according to PortWatch data cited by Al Jazeera.

Ships going the long way spend more days at sea, so the world needs more ships to move the same boxes. BIMCO estimates that rerouting away from Suez raised global demand for container ships by about 10 percent.

2026. In early February, Maersk and Hapag-Lloyd announced a Gemini service would return to the Red Sea. Then on February 28, the United States and Israel struck Iran, the start of the war our July series covered. The same day, Xeneta’s chief analyst, Peter Sand, said any phased return to the Red Sea in 2026 “will be shelved” until the security picture cleared, and warned that if Houthi attacks resumed, “carriers will reverse the decision to return services to the Red Sea.” The big wave of returns waited until late summer.

Put the four episodes side by side and three lessons survive the sourcing. Closures can last far longer than anyone plans: one ran eight years. A reopening does not restore the old world: by 1975 people were arguing over whether the canal still mattered at all. And a blocked canal gets measured by the cargo it holds up: during the 2021 blockage, which ultimately lasted six days, Lloyd’s List estimated that about $9.6 billion of cargo was being delayed each day, a rough figure for the value of cargo held up, not a measure of what was lost.

The thermostat

Systems thinkers, following Donella Meadows, have a name for the way a market like this is supposed to correct itself: a balancing feedback loop. The plain name is a thermostat.

A thermostat works because the temperature talks to the air conditioner. Too hot, the cooling comes on. Cool enough, it shuts off. Freight is supposed to work the same way. When a route gets expensive, carriers send more ships, and the extra ships push the price back down. When a route gets cheap, they pull ships, and the price recovers.

On the Europe route, the wire is connected. The long way around Africa soaked up ships: Xeneta’s Sand said in February that the longer Cape routes “absorb around 2.5 million TEU” of the world’s container capacity. Bring ships back to the short road and that capacity comes loose. Drewry says this week that fewer cancelled sailings and the resumption of Suez transits are adding capacity on the Asia to Europe route. Carriers had announced two blank sailings for next week on that route, down from six this week. A blank sailing is a scheduled voyage that a carrier cancels. BIMCO’s 10 percent of extra demand for ships, the detour’s hidden appetite, is shrinking. “That increase is now reducing quickly,” said BIMCO’s chief shipping analyst, Niels Rasmussen. The cooling came on, and the room cooled. Xeneta’s own section heading for this week says Far East to Europe “finds its level.”

On the U.S. routes, the cooling has a second switch, and carriers are using it. In one week, Xeneta counted 58,200 TEU of capacity blanked from the Far East to the U.S. West Coast and 35,500 TEU from the Far East to the East Coast. That is 93,700 TEU of space taken off the two American routes in seven days. Drewry counts six blank sailings announced for next week on the transpacific, unchanged from this week.

Xeneta’s update put it this way: with spot rates on U.S. trades still up by triple-digit percentages since February, “carriers would normally be adding capacity rather than blanking sailings.” It reads the cancellations as the move of carriers who do not believe the market will hold and are “protecting the current level rather than expecting further growth.” Xeneta’s heading for the section reads “Carriers blank sailings to hold Far East to US rates as Far East to Europe finds its level.”

We found no evidence that carriers coordinate their cancellations, and we are not alleging any. The motive is Xeneta’s reading, not something we established: it says the pattern “looks like” carriers who doubt the market will hold. What is on the record is the count of blanked capacity across the two Far East to U.S. routes that week. That is cancelled scheduled space, not a measured fall in total sailings. The thermostat still works on the U.S. route. The cooling just keeps getting switched off at the wall.

The tool comes with a trap. A balancing loop corrects, but it does not tell you when. Xeneta’s view is that the gap cannot last: “carriers cannot sustain a spread this wide for long.” That tells you the direction. It gives no date.

Why the U.S. route is different

Demand. Drewry says: “Strong US import demand continues to support high rates.” Xeneta’s Sand, in early October, said the opposite: “Demand is not strong and rates have now peaked, but they will not collapse.” The National Retail Federation’s import tracker splits the difference. It forecasts container imports at the U.S. ports it covers at 2.25 million TEU for October, up 8.5 percent on a year earlier. But August came in at 2.3 million, down 0.7 percent. And the NRF’s Jonathan Gold said: “Most holiday merchandise has arrived.” Ben Hackett, whose firm Hackett Associates compiles the tracker for the NRF, said core economic indicators “are broadly flat or weakening slightly month over month recently.” Two respected shops read U.S. demand two ways. We quote both and pick neither.

Routing. Ships from Asia to the U.S. East Coast have used both the Suez and Panama canals. In the year to October 2014, by Drewry figures reported at the time, the Suez route’s share of all-water ship capacity from Asia to the East Coast rose from 44 percent to 52 percent. We found no current split. When the Red Sea attacks began, the East Coast route felt it too. A freight forwarder, SEKO Logistics, told clients in January 2024 that going around southern Africa added about seven days from Asia to the East Coast, and that 26 Asia to East Coast vessels had already been diverted to the Cape by December 28, 2023. What we could not find is any source measuring how much of the capacity freed by Suez now reaches the East Coast route. Xeneta’s October 16 update, the one with the three-times number, does not mention Suez or Panama at all.

The open question. Before the war, the East Coast box cost about $772 more than the West Coast box, on Xeneta’s February 28 figures. By October 1, Sand said, the spread between the two U.S. routes was $3,177. On October 16 we compute it at $3,199, more than four times the prewar gap. The article quoting Sand says the gap should narrow, because the East Coast has further to fall from “its more elevated starting point.” It does not say why the gap opened.

Three explanations are on the table, and none is established by anything we read. Carriers may be managing capacity harder on the East Coast route. U.S. demand may be pulling harder there. Or other U.S.-specific factors, such as conditions at the Panama Canal, may be at work. Nobody we read has measured one against this premium, and we did not test it. Xeneta dates the U.S. surge from “pre-Hormuz crisis in February.” That is a date marker. No source we found says the Hormuz war explains why the East Coast now costs so much more than the West Coast, so we do not say it either.

What a reopening fixes, and what it does not

A reopened chokepoint does three things, all on the record. It returns ships to the route that uses it: Drewry sees the added capacity on Asia to Europe. It cuts days: 11 on a typical China to Genoa service, by Xeneta’s count. And it starts to unwind the detour’s hidden demand for ships, which BIMCO says is now falling fast. In February, when one Gemini service was set to return, Xeneta’s Emily Stausbøll said freeing even its 31,000 TEU “will not help carriers in keeping freight rates elevated in 2026.”

It does not do three things.

It does not reopen the rest of the map. The Strait of Hormuz, at the mouth of the Persian Gulf, is a separate closure. As of September 15, Sand told The Loadstar that it had “been closed to container shipping for more than half a year,” and that spot rates from China to Jeddah and to Khor al Fakkan were up 256 percent and 479 percent since February 28. As of September 30, Lloyd’s List Intelligence counted 15 containership transits that month, with feeder vessels on short regional runs behind the rise, and said traffic was “still negligible by normal standards and major lines continue to avoid the area.” A reopened Suez still leaves part of the prewar map closed.

It does not deliver the ships at once. Xeneta’s Stausbøll says the capacity released into the fleet “will also be partially absorbed by the current congestion in global ocean networks, at least for now.” BIMCO says congestion at Asian ports “could delay the full impact on vessel availability.”

And it does not bring back the old ratio between routes. The East Coast box went from 1.2 times the Europe box in February to more than three times now.

That is the larger meaning of this reopening so far. A reopened chokepoint returns supply to the route that runs through it, and freed ships can spill onto other routes: Xeneta warned in February that a large-scale return could “potentially see freight rates collapse at a global level.” On the U.S. routes that has not happened. Carriers there are cancelling scheduled sailings, no source we found isolates what the Suez return has done to U.S. prices, and the extra premium on the U.S. East Coast is still unexplained.

What it means if you buy or sell things in America

Start with the word spot. The headline rates and route comparisons in this story are spot rates, the price of booking a box on short notice. Not every importer pays it. Many sign longer contracts, and the gap between the two has been wide this year.

As of August 12, Xeneta’s data showed the Far East to U.S. East Coast spot rate at $10,249 per 40-foot box and the average long-term contract rate at $4,321. The contract rate was up 40 percent on its prewar level of $3,091, but spot was about 2.4 times the contract. Before the war, the order ran the other way: on the route to the U.S. West Coast, Xeneta said, spot rates “were below long-term rates.” Sand described a market for “contracts with a shorter tenure, securing space for the coming quarter.”

We could not find what share of U.S. importers pay spot and what share pay contract, so we will not tell you that “importers pay $11,495.” We also found no measured link from these rates to the price of anything on a store shelf, and we do not claim one.

What we can tell you is the forecast, and whose it is. Sand said in early October that rolling forward three months “could see spot rates into the US East Coast in the range of USD 6,000-7,000,” and the West Coast around $4,500 to $5,500. “That would be a sizeable correction, but not a collapse,” he said. The midpoint for the East Coast would be 43 percent below this week’s price. If you ship to the East Coast on the spot market, that is the number Xeneta’s chief analyst is putting on your next quarter.

The case against our reading

Europe was falling before Suez reopened. Sand says rates from the Far East to North Europe and the Mediterranean “peaked much earlier and have been falling since the start of July.” In August, Xeneta’s capacity count at Bab el-Mandeb averaged 212,636 TEU a week, just 23 percent of August 2023. So the Europe slide began before the September wave of returning ships. Suez helped push the Europe price down, but something else started the slide.

The split may be a U.S. story. No source we opened ties the East Coast premium to Suez. Calling this “one event, two markets” is our synthesis. It may be two separate stories that happen to share a week.

Congestion may shrink the supply shock. Both Xeneta and BIMCO say congestion absorbs some of the freed ships. The capacity numbers may overstate what reaches the market this quarter.

The gap may close by itself. If Sand’s outlook is right, the split could turn out to be a peak-season blip.

What survives: since September, two routes out of Asia moved in opposite directions. On one, Suez is part of the reason. On the other, the reason is partly visible, in the cancelled sailings Xeneta points to, and partly unexplained.

What to watch

First, the weekly prices. Drewry’s next index and Xeneta’s next weekly update will show whether the gap closes, and how. A falling New York price and a rising Rotterdam price both narrow it. They mean different things.

Second, the cancellations. Xeneta’s and Drewry’s weekly counts of cancelled U.S. sailings. If carriers stop cancelling and the U.S. price still holds, demand is doing more of the work.

Third, the canal counts. Xeneta’s scheduled capacity across Bab el-Mandeb, now 448,273 TEU a week; BIMCO’s next transit figure, now 753,000; and the canal authority’s next quarterly count of big container ships, now 166. A marker on the calendar: on October 31, Maersk’s Cornelia Maersk was scheduled to leave Tangier, its last call before Suez, on the first eastbound IEX sailing by the Red Sea. That is a planned date, not a confirmed one.

Fourth, U.S. container imports. The NRF’s next tracker will show whether October came in near its 2.25 million TEU forecast. If it falls short, Drewry’s “strong demand” reading gets weaker.

Fifth, security. Any new Houthi attack in the Red Sea, any spillover from the standoff between Ethiopia and Eritrea, and any change at Hormuz. Sand’s February warning names the event that would undo the Suez half of this story: renewed Houthi attacks.

Our call

We put it at 60 percent that on Xeneta’s weekly update of December 18, 2026, the Far East to U.S. East Coast spot rate will be less than 2.5 times the Far East to North Europe rate. On October 16 it was 3.22 times.

The 60 is our judgment, not a computed base rate. We did not pull a historical Xeneta series, so we do not know how often a ratio this high has fallen this far in nine weeks, and we will not invent a number. Here is what pushes it up. Xeneta says carriers “cannot sustain a spread this wide for long.” Sand’s three-month outlook would put the ratio near 1.8 if Europe held at $3,568. And the ratio can narrow from either end, by the U.S. price falling or the Europe price rising. Xeneta says the narrowing, driven mainly by U.S. rates falling, is what “we are now starting to see.” Here is what holds it down. The East Coast price has barely moved: $10,955 on September 10, $11,523 on October 1, $11,495 on October 16. In the week Xeneta said the narrowing was “now starting,” its East Coast rate fell 0.1 percent. The ratio did narrow that week, from about 3.3 to 3.22 on our calculation, but mostly because the Europe rate rose 2.5 percent, the end Xeneta expects to matter less. And Xeneta’s own reading is that carriers are cancelling sailings to hold the U.S. price.

The call is wrong if the December 18 Xeneta update shows the East Coast rate divided by the North Europe rate at 2.50 or higher, using the per-FEU market-average spot rates in its data highlights. If Xeneta does not publish that day, we use the last edition published on or before December 18. If Xeneta stops reporting either rate, the call is void and we say so. We score it by December 22, in public, either way.

The bottom line

The next time you read that Suez is back and shipping is getting cheaper, ask two questions. Which route is the number about? And what is it counting: a schedule, ships that sailed, or a price?

The canal has closed for months, for eight years, and for six days, and each time the world learned how much ran through it. This time it is reopening into a market that has split. On the route to Europe, the ships came back and the price came down. On the route to America, carriers are cancelling sailings, the East Coast premium over the West Coast is more than four times its prewar size, and nobody we found can say why.

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Sources

• Xeneta, weekly ocean container shipping market update, Oct 16 2026 (Bab el-Mandeb scheduled capacity 448,273 TEU on Oct 5 vs 930,679 in Aug 2023; “doubled since 27 August 2026”; spot rates Far East to USEC $11,495, USWC $8,296, N. Europe $3,568; “more than three times”; 58,200 and 35,500 TEU blanked; “cannot sustain”; congestion “at least for now”; analyst commentary; section headings): xeneta.com. Caveat: the page does not mention Suez or Panama; the Red Sea commentary is Emily Stausbøll’s, but the blank-sailing section carries no named speaker, so we attribute it to Xeneta; Xeneta says the USEC-Europe narrowing is “now starting”; the 93,700 total and all ratios are our calculations, and the Oct 9 ratio of about 3.3 is back-calculated from Xeneta’s rounded weekly changes (USEC -0.1%, N. Europe +2.5%).
• Xeneta, weekly update, Sep 10 2026 (Sep 10 spot rates; August Bab el-Mandeb capacity 212,636 TEU, “just 23%” of Aug 2023; Peter Sand: 11 days saved on a China to Genoa service): xeneta.com
• Xeneta, Jun 19 2026 (Feb 28 pre-crisis spot rates: USEC $2,651, USWC $1,879, N. Europe $2,220): xeneta.com
• Xeneta, Feb 28 2026 (Peter Sand: Red Sea return “will be shelved”; Cape routes “absorb around 2.5 million TEU”; carriers “will reverse the decision” if Houthi attacks resume; a large-scale return could “potentially see freight rates collapse at a global level”): xeneta.com
• Xeneta, Feb 4 2026 (Emily Stausbøll: one Gemini service’s return frees 31,000 TEU; “will not help carriers in keeping freight rates elevated in 2026”): xeneta.com. Caveat: her comment covered one service, not the whole return.
• Hellenic Shipping News, relaying Xeneta (Peter Sand), Oct 3 2026 (Oct 1 rates; USEC over USWC spread $3,177 vs about $772 pre-crisis; “Demand is not strong”; three-month outlook; Europe falling “since the start of July”): hellenicshippingnews.com. Caveat: the article gives no cause for the widened spread; the Oct 16 spread of $3,199 is our calculation.
• Hellenic Shipping News, relaying Xeneta (Peter Sand), Aug 15 2026 (Aug 12 spot vs long-term contract rates; contract rates up about 40%; spot below contract rates before the crisis on the USWC route; shorter-tenure contracts): hellenicshippingnews.com. The same Xeneta release, Aug 13 2026, confirms the $10,249 spot rate on Aug 12, the $3,091 to $4,321 contract change and the shorter-tenure line: ajot.com. Caveat: the spot-to-contract ratio is our calculation.
• Drewry World Container Index, Oct 15 2026 (Shanghai to Rotterdam $3,522, Genoa $3,945, Los Angeles $7,884, New York $10,075 per 40ft; Asia to Europe capacity and blank sailings; “Strong US import demand continues to support high rates”; six transpacific blank sailings; Asia-Europe rates up “after 13 consecutive weeks of decline”): drewry.co.uk. Caveat: a different index from Xeneta; we never combine the two.
• BIMCO Shipping Number of the Week, Oct 14 2026, Clarksons Research data (753k vs 1,457k TEU; first time above 50%): bimco.org. Caveat: paywalled past the opening paragraph.
• Container News, Antonia Saratsopoulou, Oct 15 2026, relaying BIMCO (36% vs 8% vs 80% canal share; about 10% added ship demand; Rasmussen quote; Asian port congestion): container-news.com. Caveat: one BIMCO release, however many outlets repeat it.
• Maritime Executive, Oct 13 2026, relaying Suez Canal Authority data (166 vs 16 large container ships, Q3): maritime-executive.com. Caveat: SCA original not opened; covers ships over 130,000 net tons only.
• Container News, Giannis Nikolakis, Sep 14 2026 (four Gemini services moved to the Red Sea; planned sailing dates including Cornelia Maersk eastbound, departing Tangier, its last call before Suez, Oct 31): container-news.com. Caveat: planned dates, not confirmed sailings.
• MarineRadar Newsroom, Oct 16 2026 (CMA CGM led the return; Ethiopia-Eritrea concern): marineradar.com. Caveat: the Ethiopia-Eritrea line is MarineRadar’s own wording, with no second source.
• National Retail Federation, Global Port Tracker release, Oct 8 2026 (Aug 2.3M TEU, down 0.7%; Oct forecast 2.25M TEU, up 8.5%; Gold and Hackett quotes; Hackett is founder of Hackett Associates, which compiles the tracker): nrf.com. Caveat: October is a forecast; the tracker covers a set of major U.S. container ports, not all U.S. imports.
• The Loadstar, Gavin van Marle, Sep 15 2026 (Hormuz closed to container shipping “for more than half a year”; China to Jeddah and Khor al Fakkan rates since Feb 28): theloadstar.com
• Lloyd’s List Intelligence, Strait of Hormuz brief, Sep 30 2026 (15 containership transits in September, feeder-led; “still negligible by normal standards and major lines continue to avoid the area”): lloydslistintelligence.com. Caveat: status as of Sep 30; October not checked.
• UNCTAD news item, Jan 29 2024, via syndicated copy (12 to 15% of global trade in 2023; 42% drop in trade volume; 67% drop in weekly container transits): hellenicshippingnews.com; second copy, also marked “Source: UNCTAD”: maritimafrica.com. Caveat: UNCTAD’s own page was blocked; read through the two copies.
• UN UNifeed, Jan 25 2024 (Jan Hoffmann: 20 percent of world container trade through Suez): media.un.org. Caveat: a spoken estimate at a briefing.
• U.S. Office of the Historian, “The Suez Crisis, 1956” (nationalization July 26; Israeli attack Oct 29; UN ceasefire Nov 6): history.state.gov
• The New Arab, Mar 28 2021 (1956 sunken ships sealed the canal for months; more than a dozen ships stranded in the Great Bitter Lake in 1967): newarab.com
• Suez Canal Authority, canal history page (navigation resumed Mar 29 1957; stopped Jun 5 1967; reopened Jun 5 1975): suezcanal.gov.eg. Caveat: another source gives a different 1957 date; we name the SCA as the source.
• Robert Arndt, “Suez: The Reopening,” Saudi Aramco World, Sep/Oct 1975 ($220 million a year; the supertanker argument and Egypt’s answer): aramcoworld.com. Caveat: a company-sponsored magazine; the supertanker point is a 1975 dispute, not a finding.
• Gulf News, Jay Hilotin, updated Mar 30 2026 (1967 to 1975 closure and the rise of very large crude carriers): gulfnews.com. Caveat: retrospective; covers tankers only.
• Al Jazeera, Apr 13 2021 (Ever Given grounded Mar 23 in a sandstorm; six-day effort; $9.6bn a day, Lloyd’s List estimate): aljazeera.com
• Al Jazeera, Mar 25 2021 (published during the blockage; Lloyd’s List westbound $5.1bn and eastbound $4.5bn; “rough calculations”): aljazeera.com
• Bloomberg via Daily Maverick, Mar 30 2021 (Ever Given freed, canal reopened; 437 ships waiting per GAC citing the canal authority): dailymaverick.co.za. Caveat: other outlets printed different queue counts.
• Al Jazeera, John Power, Oct 5 2024 (start of the Houthi campaign; 10 to 14 days added; 29 vs about 80 daily transits, PortWatch data): aljazeera.com
• Container News, Antonis Karamalegkos, Jan 9 2024, relaying Linerlytica (354 ships, 16.4% of the global fleet, via the Cape; 80% of boxships between the Atlantic/Med and the Indian Ocean): container-news.com
• SEKO Logistics client advisory, Jan 4 2024 (about 7 days added Asia to USEC; 26 vessels diverted by Dec 28): sekologistics.com. Caveat: a freight forwarder’s advisory, not a carrier or index.
• Maritime Executive, Nov 10 2014, relaying Drewry (Suez share of Asia to USEC all-water capacity, 44% to 52%): maritime-executive.com. Caveat: twelve-year-old data; no current split found.
• The Understated, “The War Both Sides Need to End,” Jul 7 2026 (war began Feb 28): understated.news
• The Understated, “Ethiopia Says Assab Will Return. Eritrea Says Ethiopia’s Army Is Coming to Take It.,” Oct 17 2026 (ties cut, troops at the border; most of the two governments’ claims not independently verified): understated.news
• Balancing feedback loops: Donella Meadows, Thinking in Systems (2008).