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Hope everyone survived the chocolate haul this weekend. My new favourite Easter egg: corn and roasted almond. Yes, really. Don't knock it until you've tried it.
— Maddie
Market Update
Container rates took a breath this week, pausing after four straight weeks of gains as carriers push for emergency bunker surcharges and the market braces for what comes next. Air freight on the China–US lane was essentially flat, holding steady as Gulf carriers continue their slow crawl back to capacity. Brent slipped as ceasefire talks between the US and Iran introduced a sliver of optimism, though with the Strait of Hormuz still effectively closed, markets aren't celebrating yet.
Plan B Has a Pipeline
What do you do when the world's most important oil chokepoint closes? If you're Saudi Arabia, you dust off a 45-year-old pipeline.
Aramco's Petroline hit full utilization for the first time in its history in early March. By month-end, Yanbu, its Red Sea terminal, was loading roughly half of Saudi Arabia's total crude exports, rerouting west instead of east through Hormuz.
But Saudi Arabia isn't the only one rerouting. Kpler shipping data shows crude traffic through Bab al-Mandeb hit its highest reading since October 2023 in March, with about 1.79 million barrels per day of that being Russian crude quietly threading a strait the Houthis spent two years trying to close.
Here's the problem: Plan B for Hormuz runs straight through another chokepoint. The supertankers that can't queue at one narrow strait are now queuing at another.
For anyone modelling oil-linked freight rates and bunker surcharges, the takeaway isn't that the energy market broke. It's that the assumption there was ever more than one way through just did.
What Else is Moving
🛢️ 8 PM Tuesday, transit fees, no deal: Trump's deadline for Iran to reopen the Strait of Hormuz expires at 8 PM ET this evening, and as of Monday morning Tehran has rejected a 45-day ceasefire proposal mediated by Pakistan, Egypt, and Turkey. Iran's foreign ministry said the strait will reopen only when "all the damage is compensated through a new legal regime, using a portion of the revenue from transit fees," which is diplomatic language for permanently formalizing the $2 million-per-tanker toll Iran was charging informally last week. Trump responded with an Easter Sunday Truth Social post threatening to make Iran "live in Hell" and renewing the "Power Plant Day" threat against Iran's electrical grid. Both sides have spent the past month establishing leverage. The question is whether either of them is willing to use it.
🚛 20+ states, 7 a.m., "paralyze everything": Mexico's National Association of Transporters and the National Front for the Rescue of the Mexican Countryside launched a nationwide trucker strike at 7 a.m. CST Monday morning, blockading freight routes across at least 20 states. Manufacturing hubs in Querétaro, Guanajuato, and Nuevo León are affected, along with major US-Mexico border crossings handling Tier-1 auto parts and cross-border electronics. Organizers are demanding tougher cargo theft enforcement, lower diesel costs, and infrastructure investment, with one telling Mexico News Daily, "We're going to paralyze everything". For US importers running just-in-time programs through Laredo or Otay Mesa, the next 48 hours will be revealing. The country that absorbed the China-tariff diversion and became Walmart's second-largest sourcing geography is now testing how much load its own freight system can carry.
⚖️ Day 42 of 150, two hearings, one panel: Customs and Border Protection's CAPE Phase 1 (Consolidated Administration and Processing of Entries) is on track to launch in late April, with the agency's March 31 status report showing the Claim Portal at 73 percent complete and Judge Eaton finding "satisfactory progress." Separately, both Section 122 lawsuits, the Liberty Justice Center / Burlap & Barrel case and the 24-state attorneys general case, face oral arguments before the same three-judge CIT panel on April 10. Same courthouse, same week, two parallel tracks: one to refund the IEEPA tariffs the Supreme Court already struck down, one to challenge the Section 122 tariffs that replaced them. With 108 days left on the Section 122 clock, the calendar just got more interesting.
🚂 $85 billion, 50,000 miles, take two: Union Pacific is set to refile its $85 billion Norfolk Southern merger application with the Surface Transportation Board on April 30, after the STB rejected the original January filing for incomplete information. Multiple rail unions have now signed labor agreements with UP tied to the deal, including the largest, removing what was the most predictable source of opposition. The combined network would be the first single-line transcontinental railroad in US history, spanning more than 50,000 route miles, 43 states, and roughly 100 ports. If the STB approves it, the calculus on every domestic intermodal lane changes overnight. If they reject it again, UP has effectively confirmed that the bar for transcontinental rail consolidation is unreachable.
By The Numbers
That's how much volumes jumped at India's Jawaharlal Nehru Port over the past month, according to project44 visibility data covering the Hormuz disruption period. Imports through Navi Mumbai climbed from a February baseline to more than seven times that level, as carriers rerouted boxes through Indian terminals onward to Salalah and Jeddah for transshipment instead of risking Persian Gulf legs.
The terminal couldn't keep up. Import dwell time at JNPT jumped from under 12 days to 23.47 days by the fourth week of disruption, the highest dwell reading anywhere in project44's network. The same dataset counted roughly 34,000 shipping routes diverted away from Hormuz over the same four-week window.
For shippers running India sourcing programs that were already at capacity, the operational picture is straightforward: the workaround works, but the cost shows up downstream. Every reroute through JNPT adds about a week and a half to lead times, and that's before any onward leg. The transit time math has changed faster than the planning systems built around it.
Water Cooler Ammo
📦 Germany is about to mail 10.5 million parcels in one day. DHL Germany is forecasting a record Easter peak on April 7, with up to 10.5 million parcels handled in a single day, well above the previous Easter record of 9 million in 2024. The standout new demand driver, alongside the usual garden furniture and outdoor gazebos: "balcony solar power systems." Germans are mailing each other photovoltaics. The grid is going decentralized one DHL package at a time.
🧪 The chip industry just placed an awkward call to Moscow. Samsung is exploring helium supply deals with Russian producers as Qatar's Ras Laffan facility remains stalled, according to TrendForce reporting on the Korean fab response. Russia is one of only two viable alternatives to Qatar for the ultra-pure helium semiconductor lithography requires. Sanctions are flexible when the alternative is no chips.
🛩️ Seven tons, no pilot, first flight. China's Changying-8 (Norinco Luca) heavy cargo drone completed its maiden flight on March 31 at Zhengzhou Shangjie Airport, validating a fully indigenous 7-ton-class logistics platform, one of the largest of its kind ever flown. Range and payload specifics are deliberately vague. Seven tons is roughly a Class 8 truck's worth of freight, moved without the truck. The cargo drone era didn't start with a press release. It started with a quiet first flight in Zhengzhou.
The Last Mile
Somewhere in Saudi Arabia, a 45-year-old pipeline is the only adult in the room. Built for a war that ended in 1988, ignored for forty years, and suddenly the most important piece of energy infrastructure on earth. The boring stuff has range.
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