The Ledger
Every statement that passed quotation and attribution checks. Mix any filter with any other: certainty 1/5, debate potential 5/5, or both at once.
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Petersen: U.S. trade tariffs will decrease American manufacturing
“What we've seen over the last few weeks is it's gonna decrease American manufacturing.”
Petersen: Tariff anomaly forced US bicycle maker overseas after ten years
“Bicycles can be imported duty free, but bicycle components cannot.
so they've decided after a decade of manufacturing in the U.S. That they now have to produce overseas because they can import the finished goods and not pay duty, but if they import the compon…”
Petersen: A dozen US manufacturers recently decided to stop domestic production
“I've seen a dozen examples in the last few months of companies that are, were producing in the U.S. And decided to stop.”
Petersen: Southeast Asian manufacturing expansion is mostly run by Chinese firms
“It's mostly Chinese manufacturers. So talk about that. This is a very important point. Yeah, it's mostly Chinese companies setting up setting up an entity in the country, hiring many cases actually getting the workers that have to learn Chinese, Vietnamese wor…”
Petersen: Importers Classify Products As Computers to Evade 30% Tariffs
“Computers are exempted right now. There's a computer and everything, so everybody in the world is trying to claim that this is actually a computer. It's not a watch, it's a computer, and then you get, you know, how do you get I've seen a lot of different peopl…”
Petersen: US apparel brands used Mexico and Canada for de minimis
“What a lot of people don't realize is a huge percentage of the world's apparel, of the American apparel brands had set up fulfillment in Mexico and Canada. To do the same thing, only they would do ocean freight from wherever the goods are made, deliver to Mexi…”
Petersen: Ending de minimis is creating fulfillment jobs in the US
“And the immediate result is a huge surge of needing to put fulfillment, wanting to put fulfillment back in the United States. There's no reason to fulfill from Tijuana. It's pretty far. You're shipping to New York from Tijuana. You're better off having a fulfi…”
Petersen: Shein and Temu will survive end of de minimis exemption
“Well, they're very big global companies first off, so yes. And they're already finding ways, you know, they have to pay duties, but they're just back to being a level playing field, so I think they're, you're gonna see them, one, produce in other countries, an…”
Petersen: Warehouse robots most likely will not be humanoid
“Humanoid actually doesn't solve a lot of problems because you don't get more density out of your warehouse. You want real estate density. You want to be able to stack the goods all the way to the ceiling, jam them in. So it's more, the form factor is not going…”
Petersen: Factory plans paused as machine costs rise 20-50% under tariffs
“Having talked to a bunch of companies that are in active, active planning mode on building factories, they've actually paused that right now because all of a sudden the machines that they have to buy are going to cost 20 to 50% more depending on where they're …”
Petersen: Tech industry will be prime target for foreign tariff retaliation
“And the tech industry will be the natural place to target. It's our best industry, our best companies. And if you wanted to retaliate against America, that would be the place to hit.”
Petersen: Cabinet secretary indicated administration will negotiate deals on tariffs
“I believe there will be deals cut. I don't know if in time to pause the tariffs altogether, but and I believe that because a cabinet secretary told me that there would be a pause, a negotiation, I should say, not a pause, but he said two weeks ago that this wa…”
Petersen: 70% chance trade deals get negotiated, China tariffs probably stick
“I give it like a 70% confidence level that they negotiate some deals. I think the China tariffs probably stick.”
Petersen: April 17 fees on Chinese-made ships will disrupt ocean freight
“We have on April 17th, no one's talking about it right now, but they're in 10 days, they're going to impose fees on ships made in China when they make a port call in the US. It's going to totally rearrange the shipping networks and make ocean freight incredibl…”
Petersen: Closing De Minimis Exemption Will Crash Air Freight Prices
“It's going to crash the price of air freight would be my prediction.”
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.”
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.”
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…”
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%.”
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.”
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…”
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.”
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.”
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.”
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…”
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%.”
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”
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.”
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.”
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 …”
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.”
Petersen: Ocean Freight in 2016 Was the Cheapest in Human History
“In 2016, we had the cheapest ocean freight in human history. Oh. It was actually a glut of capacity. It was the opposite problem as now, but one of the Korean ocean carrier, Hanjin, went bankrupt that year.”
Petersen: Almost 10% of Flexport Deliveries Go to Amazon
“Well, I think we partner with Amazon a lot, too. I mean, we probably, like, almost 10% of our deliveries go to Amazon.”
Petersen: Flexport ships technology faster with fewer engineers
“I think we actually, with fewer engineers now, we're shipping technology faster too, cause we're more focused and more like, yeah, there's real value in just like doing fewer things, but doing them better.”
Petersen: Amazon only offers freight forwarding for goods sold on Amazon
“Amazon does not see global freight forwarding for brands unless they're shipping the product and selling it on Amazon. And so we just took a different, we don't compete with them in that regard. There's some overlap certainly in the fulfillment piece, but in t…”
Petersen: Asia-to-Europe Shipping Rates Jumped Fivefold Following Red Sea Crisis
“So we saw the price of shipping from Asia to Europe went up, up about five times. Between December and now.”
Petersen: U.S. tariffs on Chinese imports stand at 30% plus historical duties
“Tariffs are currently 30% plus whatever was pre-existing, so that's a pretty big deal.”
Petersen: US-China container shipping costs jumped from $2,000 to $5,000
“I didn't check this week, I've been traveling, but it's probably 5000 or so from China to the United States. States. ... It was at two a couple months ago. Before the tariffs hit.”
Petersen: AI voice technology prices dropped about 90% in the past year
“It's that the price of that's come down about 90% in the last year and it's becoming quite commodified.”
Petersen: Panama Canal 2024 capacity dropped to two-thirds with 21-day delays
“2023 was quite a dry year, and that led to 20 24 not having enough water in the canal to operate at full capacity. So that led to only about two thirds the number of ships trans transiting the canal as were theoretically capable of transiting which led to huge…”
Petersen: Flexport is third-largest US freight forwarder and top 10 globally
“We're, you know, we're the third largest American freight forwarding company, top 10 globally.”
Petersen: Largest freight forwarder holds only 3% to 4% market share
“The largest freight forwarders in the world are worth 30 to fifty billion dollars, depending on the year of what Wall Street's, how Wall Street's valuing them and the biggest one has three or four percent market share, and that's just in freight forwarding.”
Petersen: Flexport operates 4 million square feet of fulfillment facilities
“We've got four million square foot facilities, and that was an investment we did with Dave.”
Petersen: Panama Canal Operating at Roughly Two-Thirds Capacity
“Panama Canal is only operating at about two thirds capacity.”
Petersen: Container ships disabled satellite transponders to avoid attacks
“And a lot of these container ships, like the first thing they did was turn off their satellite transponders so that it would be harder for the terrorists to attack them, to find them.”
Petersen: Tesla and Volvo paused European production due to component shortages
“We saw this in Europe recently where both Tesla and Volvo announced that they were shutting down their manufacturing lines for a few weeks. I think they've reopened by now, but they had to shut down their lines. Because they couldn't get the components in.”