How a handful of chokepoints came to dominate the world economy in International Shipping News 12/05/2026 The closure of the Strait of Hormuz in February once again demonstrated how volatile global trade flows are—and not just for oil. The strait, which narrows to just 21 miles wide as it passes between Iran and Oman, normally carries a quarter of the world’s seaborne oil trade, making it one of the most critical logistical factors to global energy supply. But as the key maritime trade route from the Gulf region to the rest of the world, it also holds sway over large swathes of the rest of the economy. About one third of the world’s fertilizer passes through the strait, and about the same share of global helium production. Then there’s critical amounts of sulphur, aluminum, methanol—the list goes on, with the effects rippling through industries from food to construction to consumer electronics. But how did shipping come to be so vital for the global economy? And why is maritime transport so beholden to a handful of chokepoints? Shipping’s rise to transport domination Shipping has been key to the global movement of goods for a long time, from the ancient Greeks to the British Empire. But maritime trade as we know it largely came into being in the second half of the last century. The invention that drove this development more than any other was the humble shipping container. By the early 1900s, much international cargo shipping was still conducted using break bulk. This involved individually counted units—a crate of produce, say, or a barrel of oil—that had to be manually loaded and unloaded by legions of dock workers, and laboriously transferred from truck to ship, or ship to rail. During the Second World War the US military started using standardized containers to speed up supply transports, and companies began more widely using container systems, too. But the most significant change came around 1955, when a trucking entrepreneur named Malcolm McLean worked with an engineer named Keith Tantlinger to develop a prototype of the intermodal container that still dominates freight today. Their container design was meant to be easily stack- and movable, meant to not be opened at all during transit and loading between ships, trucks and trains. Soon, more and more transportation took its cue from the load, rather than the other way around. The late 60s finally saw the implementation of global container standards and soon massive seaports sprung up. Containerization revolutionized what had been a slow, expensive and labor-intensive process. Now ports became more efficient—modern ports can move upwards of 70 containers per crane per hour—and the unit cost of shipping declined sharply, since individual ships could handle higher loads. Suddenly, it was highly economical to ship things around the world. Today shipping remains the backbone of international logistics. Between 1970 and 2019, international shipping trade roughly quadrupled from 2.6 billion tons to 11.1 billion tons per year—or about 1.4 tons per person. Although shipping volumes have levelled out in recent years, more than 80% of global goods trade still moves via ships, from oil and coal to smartphones. How Asia rose to shipping supremacy Until the early 2000s, seaborne trade was still dominated by liquid bulk—oil and liquefied natural gas, as well as chemicals and other fluids. With the rise of the container, and the expansion of global supply chains, maritime transport increasingly sh