Activity at the world’s busiest ports is holding up at the start of 2021—a good sign for global trade as it battles surging freight costs and as uneven demand ahead of the Lunar New Year makes the monthly data more wobbly.
December Hong Kong container throughput had its best reading in almost three years, according to Bloomberg’s Trade Tracker. Inbound containers at the Port of Los Angeles notched a third straight above-normal reading. And Singapore container throughput finished the year with its best rate in three months while still slightly below its longer-run average.
A slide in expectations among German businesses notwithstanding, sentiment gauges are on a good run, with the purchasing manager index measures from the U.S., China, and Singapore all marking steady improvement through the end of 2020.
There’s more reason to expect that underlying momentum in trade flows will be a bit harder to read in the early part of 2021, however. Five of the 10 gauges measure year-on-year rates, which means that in the months ahead the Tracker could look superficially good, given the demand crash at the start of the pandemic last year.
We’ve selected measures across shipping, sentiment and export volumes to watch for signs of stress amid the tensions. For the clearest indication, we measured how far each gauge is from historic norms.