Prediction Didn’t hold up
Petersen: Closing De Minimis Exemption Will Crash Air Freight Prices
“It's going to crash the price of air freight would be my prediction.”
Prediction Held up
Petersen: Asian e-commerce giants will absorb duties if de minimis ends
“My suspicion from having analyzed a few of these and working with them is that the companies will keep, keep going and just have to pay the duties.”
Prediction Didn’t hold up
Petersen predicts short-term goods recession driven by higher consumer prices
“Short term is going to be a lot, a goods recession for sure. I mean, there'll be less goods sold because prices will be higher.”
Insight
Petersen: Dedicated operators beat task specialization in logistics by cutting errors
“One operator doing all the tasks on a single shipment and always working for that same, the customer always working with that same group of operators because it turns out that all the inefficiency and logistics comes from mistakes. So if you can get the qualit…”
Insight
Petersen: Tech-only cargo trackers cannot afford manual human updates
“Because they, their business model doesn't allow them, if you're only getting paid a couple bucks per container, the business model doesn't really allow a lot of human manual updates. Whereas for us, we're getting paid thousands of dollars to deliver these con…”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Petersen: Flexport could automate 20% of human freight tasks per year
“We have members of our team who are not hype, They're not subject to hype. Very, you know, realistic living and reality types of engineering leaders who are really believe that we're on the verge of some breakthroughs within our own business of automating, lik…”
Assertion Supported
Petersen: 145% tariffs caused a 60% drop in China-to-U.S. cargo volume
“It was at one 45 for five weeks. And so, during that five-week period, the volume of cargo from China to the US dropped by 60%.”
Assertion Contradicted
Petersen: Lowering tariffs to 30% triggered an 80% surge in shipping volume
“Tariffs got relaxed back down to 30%. We've had a 80% increase in volume from China to the U.S. Above the pre-tariff levels.”
Assertion Supported
Petersen: US tariffs on China will jump to 54% in August without a deal
“I mean, 30% from China, it's set to go back to 54%. On August 18th, I want to say 18th is the ninety-day, it's because it's just a pause on the China stuff, so you had a pause of 90 days from April eightth for rest of China. You had a ninety-day pause till Jul…”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Petersen: Brands will mostly absorb 30% China tariffs without big price hikes
“So those things could be very disruptive and lead to inflation, but current level, 30%, it feels like brands will mostly absorb that and not pass it. They'll pass it through a little bit, but it's, remember, this is 30% on the cost.”
Assertion Partly supported
Petersen: Most Indian iPhone components still come from China
“Even the Indian iPhones and whatever is still like most of the components are coming from it from China.”
Assertion Supported
Petersen: Temu reached 25% of Amazon's scale within five years
“That's what Letimu, Get to 25% of Amazon's scale in five years is that they skip all that fulfillment center infrastructure.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Petersen: US Amazon sellers demand ban on foreign importers of record
“You can import goods as a foreign company with no legal status in the United States other than what's called a foreign importer of record or a non-resident importer. There's a wide, there's a huge demand amongst the Amazon seller community, the American compan…”
Disclosure
Petersen: 28% of Flexport customers paused all ocean freight in April
“We did on Friday, a call down for, I mean, we didn't get in touch with all of our customers, but we call a lot of customers on Friday and they, 28% of them told us that they're pausing all their ocean freight.”
Disclosure
Petersen: Flexport is not interested in being acquired
“So we rather, yeah, we're not really, we're not interested in being acquired.”
Opinion
Petersen: Amazon is probably the best company in the world
“I still think it's like the best company in the world probably.”
Insight
Petersen: LLMs parse changing spreadsheets into databases without rewriting parsing code
“It'll take a spreadsheet, which is like I was saying, is just like massively complex spreadsheet and put it into a database accurately, like more accurately than humans doing data entry. And these spreadsheets change every week, every few weeks. It's not, it's…”
Assertion Partly supported
Petersen: China produces 40% of global manufacturing output
“Right now, China produces 40% of the world's manufacturing output. U.S. Post-World War II, we were at 47%.”
Assertion Partly supported
Petersen: Vietnam manufacturing grew 20-30% yearly while pegging currency to dollar
“Vietnam has had this manufacturing boom for the last five years, about 20, 30% growth annually each year. Their currency is the Vietnamese dong, and it's pegged to the dollar. It hasn't appreciated it at all”
Prediction Held up
Petersen: Blanket Tariff Lawsuit Will Reach Supreme Court in ~6 Months
“That's the one that they lost the court case, and it's gonna get, gonna work its way to the Supreme Court over the next six months or so, or some timeline.”
Assertion Supported
Petersen: Customs fraud is DOJ's number two white-collar priority
“The DOJ has said it's their number two area of white collar crime that they are investigating. Their number two priority. Number one is healthcare fraud, and number two is customs fraud.”
Assertion Partly supported
Petersen: De minimis volume grew from 100k to 4M daily packages
“It went from, see if I can remember my stats on this, it went from a 100,000 packages a day to four million packages a day in the last decade, clearing under de minimis. Now to, 70% of that was China, so now, you know, we've eliminated 70% of that in the last …”
Disclosure
Petersen: Flexport makes 4,000 to 5,000 automated AI voice calls daily to truckers
“We're making four or 5000 phone calls a day.”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Petersen: The Panama Canal might operate below capacity every six years
“And so we might just live in a world where every six years your canal is not operating at full capacity.”
Ryan Petersen