☠️🥀☠️🥀☠️🥀☠️🥀☠️🥀☠️🥀☠️🥀☠️🥀☠️🥀☠️🥀We can’t keep talking about Trump in this newsletter. Boxy is getting sick and tired of it—very sick and tired. President Donald Trump is currently targeting, again, the Suez and Panama canals for free passage for all U.S.-flagged vessels, especially military. People are pissed.

• Semafor reports that President Trump demanded free transit for United States ships that transit vital trade routes like the Panama Canal and the Suez Canal. Donald Trump’s claims that these routes don’t exist without Washington, D.C.

• But what makes this problematic for ongoing international relations between the U.S. with Panama and Egypt is the genocidal intention. And, yes, we are going to play that card in a trade and freight industry newsletter. Here’s why: The Panama and Suez are vital. Both are widely considered two of the most crucial trade routes in the world due to their strategic roles as shipping chokepoints.

• Haitham El-Zobaidi wrote in The Arab Weekly that President Trump is relying on a transactional approach with the Egyptian president Abdel Fattah el-Sisi to allow free passage through the Suez in exchange for paving the way for a blanket military campaign against Yemeni Houthi militants backed by Iran. If we all recall, the Houthis are happily (sarcasm) engaged in molesting foreign trade through the Suez and Red Sea corridor between the Indian Ocean and the Mediterranean.

• In other reports at the same news outlet, an Egyptian military general explained that President Donald Trump is instigating “political and commercial bullying.”

• Spanish-language news media reports indicate that Panamanian President José Raúl Mulino said “there is no agreement to the contrary” surrounding the Panama Canal Authority granting free transit. Mulino adds that the canal is independent.

• Trump has also previously lied and bullied Mulino and the canal authority into offering such an agreement. As noted months ago, there is no deal in place, nor will there be one that allows U.S. naval and commercial ships to transit for free.

• Note, this all comes on the backdrop of the ongoing trade war Trump instigated. As such, Trump’s protectionism and his inconsistency have actually offered a sign that his “Liberation Day” tariffs and economic reforms have caused some damage.

• Trump’s Commerce Department reports that the U.S. economy contracted in his first 100 days in office, despite his claims to the contrary. The man is losing it.

• The U.S. economy contracted 0.3% in the first quarter of 2025: “The decrease in real GDP in the first quarter primarily reflected an increase in imports, which are a subtraction in the calculation of GDP, and a decrease in government spending.”

• “Trump invariably reverts to his tried-and-true method: he blames someone else. Yet Trump has not quite done the damage alone,” argues Sidney Blumenthal, a columnist for The Guardian. “Trump’s crusades have been made possible by his invocation of emergency powers. But his executive orders…are rooted in fictions.”

Bottom line: Trump is screwing the global economy. And it isn’t looking good. There is growing concern among economists, business leaders, and political figures that President Donald Trump's economic policies are contributing to a downturn in the U.S. economy.

MORE: “US consumer confidence plummets to Covid-era low as trade war stokes anxiety” - The Associated Press

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Cargo airlines are looking for new markets because they now have more space available after the US ended the de minimis exemption for China last Friday. The Loadstar reporting

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