There's no detour for the Strait of Hormuz.

I had a whole opener written about daylight saving time. Then Friday happened. Anyway. Let's talk about the Strait of Hormuz.

— Maddie

Three weeks. That's how long the shipping industry's return to normal lasted.

On February 9, we covered Hapag-Lloyd and Maersk resuming Suez Canal transits after more than two years of rerouting around Africa. Transit times shrank by 10-14 days. Route planners updated their schedules. The mood was cautiously optimistic.

Then, in the final days of February, Maersk quietly re-diverted at least three sailings back around the Cape of Good Hope, citing "unforeseen constraints." By Friday, those constraints had a name.

On February 28, the US and Israel launched joint military strikes across Iran, hitting targets across the country and killing Supreme Leader Khamenei. Iran retaliated with missiles at US bases across multiple Gulf states, including strikes that hit the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait, and Bahrain.

Then came the line that stopped the shipping world: Iran's Revolutionary Guard broadcast VHF warnings to all vessels in the Strait of Hormuz, declaring no ship was allowed to pass. Tehran hasn't formally announced a blockade. It doesn't matter. MSC halted all Middle East cargo bookings. Maersk and Hapag-Lloyd suspended all Hormuz transits. CMA CGM ordered every vessel inside or bound for the Gulf to shelter immediately. All four carriers are now rerouting around the Cape of Good Hope. War risk insurers didn't wait for Monday: they issued cancellation notices over the weekend, with premiums expected to double from 0.25% to 0.5% of hull value. For a $150 million container vessel, that's a single-transit premium jumping from $375,000 to $750,000.

Here's why this is structurally different from the Red Sea crisis your supply chain has been managing since 2023: the Red Sea has a bypass. Cape of Good Hope adds 10-14 days and significant fuel costs, but cargo moves. The Strait of Hormuz has no equivalent. It is the only maritime passage connecting the Persian Gulf to the open ocean. When it closes, Gulf ports don't slow down. They stop.

That includes Jebel Ali, DP World's flagship hub and the Middle East's primary transshipment node, which handled 15.5 million TEU in 2024. A fire broke out at one of its berths Saturday after debris from an intercepted drone strike. DP World suspended operations. Kuwait's Shuaiba port evacuated vessels to anchorage. Bahrain and Qatar suspended maritime operations entirely. Linerlytica estimates roughly 170 containerships carrying 450,000 TEU are currently trapped inside the strait.

On the energy side, roughly 20% of the world's daily oil supply transits Hormuz. Brent closed Friday at $73, but analysts project prices could reach $100 or higher if disruption holds into the trading week. By Sunday, a tanker flying the Palau flag was struck off Oman's coast, and a Chinese-owned VLCC became one of the only commercial vessels to transit the strait, fueling speculation that Chinese-flagged ships may receive informal safe passage, mirroring the immunity they've largely enjoyed from Houthi attacks.

Meanwhile, Houthis have vowed to resume Red Sea attacks. Thousands of Middle East flights are cancelled, squeezing air cargo capacity across the region. Maersk has already re-diverted its Suez services back around the Cape.

The industry spent two years adapting to the loss of one shortcut. Now it's lost two. And the one thing every rate, route, and delivery commitment has in common this week is that none of them are certain.

⚖️ 2,000+ lawsuits and counting: The legal fallout from the Supreme Court's IEEPA tariff ruling is accelerating faster than anyone expected. The Justice Department is actively trying to slow down the refund process, while importers are demanding fast-track injunctions. FedEx and UPS are already facing customer lawsuits over tariff-related brokerage fees. The Section 122 replacement tariff (currently 10%, capped at 15%) expires July 24 without Congressional approval. The 150-day clock is ticking and being challenged in court simultaneously. The tariffs are dead. The replacement might be too. The lawsuits are just getting started.

📉 $1,899 per container, and still falling: The Drewry World Container Index dropped for the seventh consecutive week. Carriers responded by blanking 136 voyages in February, 122% more than January, and vessel dwell times at San Pedro Bay spiked 91% above the four-week average. Container Management called it "engineering their own congestion." Iran's Hormuz restrictions could accidentally do what 136 blank sailings couldn't. Cape of Good Hope diversions absorb capacity. The thing that's terrible for global trade might be exactly what carriers need.

💻 30% of WiseTech's workforce, gone: WiseTech Global, the company behind CargoWise (the platform that quietly underpins a large share of global freight forwarding), is cutting nearly a third of its employees in an AI-driven restructure. Two weeks after the Algorhythm white paper triggered a logistics stock selloff, and one week after C.H. Robinson's CEO insisted "we're the disruptor, not the disrupted," the company that makes the actual software is betting that AI can do the work of 30% of its humans. That's not a white paper. That's a restructuring in progress.

🚢 Shadow Fleet, Meet Daylight: Belgian special forces boarded and seized a Russian "shadow fleet" tanker this week, continuing a European crackdown that started with Denmark's detention of a sanctioned boxship two weeks ago. Turns out the shadow fleet is running out of shadows.

💻 The Mac Mini Comes Home: Apple announced it will produce Mac mini computers in the US for the first time. It's assembly, not full manufacturing, and the Mac Mini is a tiny slice of Apple's hardware. But for a company that's paid $3.3 billion in tariffs, announcing it the day before the State of the Union was not a coincidence.

🤖 The Algorithm Will See You Now: Project44 launched an AI agent that automates freight procurement, from carrier selection to rate benchmarking to award decisions. For anyone who's ever spent three weeks in a spreadsheet running a mini-bid, the pitch practically sells itself. Whether shippers trust an algorithm with their carrier relationships is a different question.

Monday morning, every supply chain dashboard on the planet will look different than it did Friday. Some weeks are like that.

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