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This week, I sat down with Ryan Petersen, CEO of Flexport, at a moment of real upheaval in the global trading system. Ryan runs a logistics platform that sees about 1% of all US trade, so he’s got a direct line into how companies are reacting in real time: pausing shipments, renegotiating supply chains and in some cases, facing existential choices.
I wanted to understand how the tariff storm is playing out on the ground—and what it means for the future of globalization.
We talked about:
* The economic shock hitting importers right now and why many are considering abandoning shipments altogether
* How this new trade war may unintentionally increase global shipping, as supply chains stretch and reroute
* The weird inefficiencies emerging around semiconductors and AI hardware, thanks to tariff classifications
* Whether this is just another blip—or a real inflection point in the 800-year rise of global trade
* What Flexport has seen in customer behavior—and what that tells us about resilience, agility and Darwinian survival.
We also went deep into the geopolitics of shipping: the fragility of sea lanes like the Red Sea, the underinvestment in US ports, and what it really means when the US Navy stops guaranteeing free trade routes.
Ryan brought a perspective that’s part historian, part operator and part futurist. If you’ve ever wanted to understand how technology, tariffs, and tectonic shifts in globalization collide - this is your episode.
Thank you Sinéad Bovell, Alex Pawlowski, Badru Ntege, Loes, and many others for tuning into my live video with Ryan Petersen!
