Ryan Petersen on Flexport, supply chain resilience under tariffs, and why the trade war is reshaping global logistics

Summary

Ryan Petersen, CEO of Flexport, is seeing a sharp pullback in trans-Pacific trade. Flexport's data shows a 60% decline in freight bookings from China to the US, which has triggered ocean carriers to blank roughly 25% of sailings. Rates are currently low, but Petersen flags a first-class problem scenario: if tariffs ease and volume surges back, rates spike hard.

The disruption is cutting both ways for Flexport. Smaller importers are opting out of the system entirely — they can't pivot to new suppliers quickly and, in Petersen's words, didn't spend enough at the inauguration to secure exemptions. That's bad for customers. But cancelled sailings from direct carriers have made Flexport more valuable as an intermediary: when a booked sailing gets pulled, Flexport can reroute cargo onto another carrier.

China side

Petersen's read on China is blunt: the trade slowdown is very bad for an economy already running with extremely high youth unemployment. But he thinks China can absorb the pain longer than the US can. A few points of GDP decline registers as a rounding error against a century of warlord eras, famines, and structural hardship baked into the culture. The American feedback loop — political, consumer, market — is faster and louder.

He frames the standoff as a game of chicken where both cars are already scratching, and someone needs to swerve before it turns fatal. He's been telling lawmakers tariffs should come down significantly, though he acknowledges nobody is listening. On Trump's willingness to hold the line against near-universal opposition, Petersen is grudging: whatever you think of the policy, the resolve is real.

The segment ends before Petersen answers whether there's genuine optimism among the DC politicians he's been meeting.