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!
