The transportation response to the trade cool down/What David Simon had to say on this/Small business less optimistic

A tweet last night from the CEO of Flexport, Ryan Petersen, "Our ocean freight bookings from China to US increased 35% in the first day since the trade deal. A big backlog is looming, soon the ships will be sold out." https://x.com/typesfast/status/1922075631270953226. I've seen stories that the cost of shipping a 40 ft container from a baseline figure of about $2,000, is now up between $500-$1000. All to be expected however given the opportunity window over the coming months and ahead of back to school and the holidays.

The CEO of the American Apparel & Footwear Association told the South China Morning Post, "Industry conversations immediately shifted from doom and gloom to; how high will the cost of freight rise? And when can I get my goods?"

While tariffs on China are now down to 30%, that is still a very high rate and David Simon, the CEO of Simon Property Group chimed in on it on last night's call:

"Projecting and predicting sales is really difficult because to the extent that there is a retailer that imports goods from China, even with today's kind of reduction in kind of tit for tat, you're still talking about 30% tariff, which is material. And at this point, many retailers are either halting ordering goods from China, which could affect their inventory levels, trying to source it elsewhere, which they may or may not be successful with. And so it's a relatively big unknown to the extent that there is a reliance on China even on today's recent news."

"And given margins, those tariffs in the 30-ish percent, I think are going to give retailers pause whether or not they can afford to have goods shipped to them from China. To the extent that it is in the more flat 10%, I think it's really retailer dependent. I think they're going to probably operate business as usual. They'll I think try to pass a little bit on to the consumer, they'll try to get the manufacturer to take some of it and they may take some of it as well."

Also of note, "traffic is holding up, the malls are actually performing above and the outlets are relatively flat and I would say what we're seeing in the outlet on a traffic point of view is we have assets on the boarder, whether in Mexico or Canada. And obviously, there has been a slowdown in traffic and sales on some of our border great long-term assets, but currently, with all the rhetoric, we're seeing some traffic diminution on some of the border assets with Canada and our Mexican customers. So hopefully as that rhetoric dies down, we'll get back to normal."