Will be interesting to see it's effect.
just heard that a 40ft shipping container from China to Australia had gone up from $1400 to $8000 in recent times. Someone will have to cover the costs.

..and sitting in limbo for a month before unloading adds to prices...

mark62 said..
Cost may reduce in the future, but suspect it may never return to pre pandemic prices.

Supply and demand. The price of containers and the cost on ships is brokered. Unless there are significantly less container ships / containers now compared to say 4 years ago supply will eventually catch up with demand again and prices will go down.

From what I have heard the biggest problem at the moment is a lot of containers sitting empty in countries other than China. In some cases empty containers being shipped to China just to provide enough supply.

I suspect the trade wars between the US and China the last couple of years didn't help.

I was told for US container cost went from $3500 to $15000.