Singapore Port Traffic Jam From USA Tariffs & Middle East Conflict, Climate Change Creating Arctic Shipping Route & Trump 10% Global & 60% China Tariffs with Shiyan Koh - E443

Shiyan Koh, Managing Partner of Hustle Fund, and ​​Jeremy Au talked about three main points:

1. Singapore Port Traffic Jam From USA Tariffs & Middle East Conflict: Shiyan and Jeremy examined the severe traffic congestion at Singapore's port, now at unprecedented levels. Yemen's Houthi rebel attacks on Red Sea commercial shipping (in support of the Gaza conflict) have diverted container ships from the Suez Canal to the Cape of Good Hope route, thus forcing ships to refuel and unload cargo in Singapore instead of Middle Eastern ports. The USA Biden administration's increased tariffs on China have prompted Chinese exporters to expedite shipments before the tariffs take full effect, further exacerbating the congestion. The broader manufacturing "China Plus One" decoupling strategy has also compounded the supply chain management issues.

2. Climate Change Creating Arctic Shipping Route: Global warming is melting the Arctic North Pole ice, thus empowering ships to soon bypass traditional shipping routes through the Straits of Malacca and thus Singapore. They discussed why Russia and China are interested in overcoming the substantial infrastructural and financial challenges to establish viable northern ports, and why this is a negative for Singapore’s shipping industry over the course of the next 100 years - similar to the fall of the Venetian empire due to shifting trade routes.

3. Trump 10% Global & 60% China Tariffs: Jeremy noted that if Trump wins the 2024 election, his proposed tariffs could dramatically alter global trade dynamics, with tariffs as high as 60% on Chinese imports. They discussed how this trade war scenario would force Chinese companies to accelerate relocating to Southeast Asia or other regions. Shiyan shared insights from her recent trip to China, emphasizing the country’s robust infrastructure capabilities and the strategic responses of Chinese companies.

Jeremy and Shiyan also talked about Singapore’s historical role as a deep-water port, technology’s role in shaping future economic landscapes, and the potential for increased domestic manufacturing in the US.

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(01:39) Jeremy Au:

Morning, Shiyan!

(01:40) Shiyan Koh:

Morning, Jeremy. You caught me on a bad hair day.

(01:43) Jeremy Au:

There's always the question that we always have the morning, we always go ah, make sure we look,

(01:46) Shiyan Koh:

Amazing! We look amazing, Jeremy! What are you talking about?

(01:50) Jeremy Au:

That's what they say, right? You got a voice for radio and a face for radio as well.

(01:52) Shiyan Koh:

What're you trying to tell me?

(01:55) Jeremy Au:

It was more of a generalized statement rather than you specifically, there we go. So I think this week we want to talk about the big traffic jam in Singapore port container shipping and how it relates to global economics and politics, right? So the big news that's currently for a lot of people who are unaware is that Singapore's port is at an all time high of traffic congestion. In other words, there's too many container ships and they're all piling up, they're all trying to get parking, and they're all getting diverted to other ports because of there being way too many ships out there. And newspaper articles are saying that this is due to three reasons. One is, the Middle East conflict where Yemen's Houthi rebels have been attacking ships. And so ships no longer choose to go through the Suez Canal but take a longer route around the Cape of Good Hope at the southern tip of Africa. So in other words, they don't get a chance to refuel or unload cargo anymore in the Middle East ports. So now they have to do it all in Singapore. That's one piece.

The second piece is that the new Biden tariffs on China have been increased. And so Chinese exporters are rushing to get containers and try to get a goods into the country before it all happens.

And then thirdly, of course, is that there is a lot of supply chain disruption still reverberating, not just after COVID, but also from the China plus one decoupling strategy that a lot of manufacturers are doing in order to do resilience planning, against the current US administration policy, but also against the risk of tightening sanctions slash tariffs by the US side against China. A lot of supply chain changes but basically, it's showing up in one obvious way, which is a lot of ships parked outside Singapore, trying to get in.

(03:31) Shiyan Koh:

Yeah, I think it's funny, right? I think for being a port town, and that's our history, we don't actually think that much about it. I mean, I think maybe that's a testament to how diversified the economy has been, right? But if you think about the original purpose of Singapore was to be this deep water British port. And to have all of these kinds of pile up is an interesting thing that we haven't seen since the height of the pandemic, when people were seeing the supply chain disruptions.

But I think you had shared an article, Jeremy, which posited an interesting thought around the consequence of global warming possibly being that the ice would melt enough in the Arctic passage that ships wouldn't have to sail past Singapore anymore to get from Europe to Asia. They could just sail north, the northern route through, and cut a bunch of travel time off of it. And that would be a big blow, I think, to our shipping business. Any thoughts on that?

(04:19) Jeremy Au:

Yeah, it makes sense because, first of all, do you believe there's going to be more global warming or do you think there's going to be less, right? Climate change is real, at least, come at me if you disagree with me, but I'm just saying this is happening. And so ice melts when you do that in the northern routes, the north pole basically melts when that happens. Yeah with that happening, there's more ice-free shipping channels. I think it's a no-brainer that, the whole route opens up. And, I guess the question of course, is number one is, what is the logistical and financial needs to make those routes happen? Because that's, because you have the oceans open, it doesn't mean that have the ports ready. And so this is the north of Russia, right? North of Canada, north of America. There are not a lot of suitable ports. That's one.

And two, of course, there's a lot of geopolitics involved as well. So the people who are most interested in this right now is primarily Russia and China because Russia has historically always needed warm water pot. In other words, they had a lot of parts up in the north. And used to be frozen all the time, for half the year. So they needed ports in the south, around the Crimea region to have access to the southern seas, right?

And then for China right now, they're worried about the potential of a naval blockade of energy and imports. Yeah, the streets of Malacca around Singapore, Malaysia by the US if there's a military conflict, and so they would love to have more access to the northern route, to give them access, to global trade. And of course, there's also currently spurring China's huge investments in the belt and road initiative, basically building out infrastructure, road links, rail links, across, Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam, Asia. So, a lot of geopolitics definitely happening right now that impacts Southeast Asia a lot.

(05:49) Shiyan Koh:

I just got back from two weeks in China, and can I just say that their ability to build infrastructure is amazing. And yeah, really like second to none. So I really hope they can build the railway all the way to Thailand and Malaysia. I think that would be awesome.

(06:01) Jeremy Au:

Yeah, but it's not so good for Singapore for some ways because if you're moving freight primarily through the ship, then having a railway link is not a net positive to Singapore. And it's really, of course, Singapore can't do anything about it, it's just an interesting dynamic.

(06:13) Shiyan Koh:

Yeah, but maybe, I don't know, maybe you also build more clusters of businesses around the rail line that can exist without a port. Yeah. I mean, I feel like we want our neighbors to thrive, right? A good neighborhood to live in, I think, is beneficial for us. And so to the extent that Malaysia and Thailand can thrive and continue to build on this sort of China plus one strategy. I think it's like good for us and our positioning as a services hub, right? We're not gonna that manufacturing business. But, we'll be the capital providers. We'll be the marketplaces. We'll be the lawyers, the accountants, all those things. That, that's also part of our play.

(06:44) Jeremy Au:

Yeah, I mean, I don't think it's a, it's a net negative. It's just that, everything has its positives and negatives, right? It also depends on whether, from a single-box perspective, are you like a dove or a hawk in that sense. There's always that two double-angle prism which is economic growth, everybody can share and grow the pie, and then obviously there's more of a security aspect which is protecting your slice of the pie, as it stands today.

(07:04) Shiyan Koh:

I mean, I'm an early-stage VC. I'm a grow-the-pie person.

(07:07) Jeremy Au:

No, it's true, right? And I always, aligned with you about that, right? I mean, if you run a podcast and you're chatting about what's happening in the market, you want to grow the pie together, versus if you're a hawk, it's all about secrets, proprietary information. You wouldn't want to discuss about a lot of this stuff publicly or share it to other people as well.

So talking about, doves and hawks from Southeast Asia, I think everybody is busy maneuvering right now because everybody's waiting for the outcome of the November elections, right? So it is Trump versus Biden. The betting markets have Biden at around 50%, Trump, 50%. I think The Economist forecast puts Trump at 70% and Biden at 30% of winning this election. So a lot of things, moves and counter moves are being made. I think based on this calculation.

(07:47) Shiyan Koh:

I can't, you're giving me PTSD. I left in the middle of the first Trump presidency. I can't contemplate a second one. I mean, I think it's an interesting thing, which is like, his appeal definitely represents something about the American system. I think he really speaks to this idea that, Hey, the system isn't working for us. And when he says things like, oh, it's rigged and I'm going to fix it and all these sorts of things. I think it appeals to people who want to topple the apple cart. They want to flip the table, right? Max variance. And I think it's like a weird feature that a lot of people don't actually think a lot about. All the systems and levers of government, I think in a sense they're probably right in that a lot of the mechanisms of government are not working for them the way it should be. So whether that's regulatory capture by lobbyists, or extremists pushing single issues through state legislatures, whether it's abortion or lack of gun control, I think that very real sense that they're, that he's tapping into. And then I think there's a bunch of opportunistic people who are like, you've seen this long record of never Trumpers turn into Trump endorsers, right?

When they start out being like, Oh, he couldn't possibly. I'm horrified. And then they're like, Oh no, he's going to be, I better get on the train. Otherwise I'm going to be left out in the cold. And so I don't know, I think it's like a profoundly distressing thing that neither, like the Republican party does not have a better candidate that they thought they could put up with the MAGA arm and yet they can't control it now, they can't put in their more traditional moderate candidates. They have to live with him. And so then they have to do all these like crazy contortions to sort of justify why they're still supporting him. His support increased after he was convicted. I mean, it's so crazy that the leader, the potential future president of the US could be a convicted felon. And people are like, yeah, totally fine. It was rigged. So it's sort of like, if I win, it's not rigged. If I don't win, it is rigged. The whole thing is totally logically ridiculous but that's not really what's happening. It's not about logic. It's about feelings. I don't know. It concerns my Singaporean heart that craves order and logic.

(09:39) Jeremy Au:

Yeah, it's not an easy topic at all. You reminded me of this article is reading in Economist last night and I was talking about business leaders, and it was talking about the Trump wager, Pascal's wager. And basically what they're saying is that, business leaders are basically making a choice, which is that, they are making moves on assumptions that if Biden wins, they will get penalized for what they're doing right now. If Trump wins, then they will be penalized for any moves they do that's anti-Trump. And so from that perspective, as a result, business leaders are either staying very neutral or working on collaborating with Trump as well, because, they feel like, it's asymmetric in terms of the incentives and outcomes for it, as well as the fact that, they're reading the forecast and they see that a Trump victory is more likely as of today, from their perspective.

So I think it's interesting schema as well. And I think we just saw that, for example, in the All In podcast, which was, it just did an hour with Trump as well. And then they did debrief afterwards. And I thought it was, it's quite interesting that, they had, like a very, to and fro kind of discussion, about tech and politics, but definitely, I think it represented like a concerted effort by Trump to engage with the Silicon Valley, generally libertarian crowd as well. So it was just interesting to see that happen.

(10:45) Shiyan Koh:

I salute you for listening to it. Thank you for your service.

(10:48) Jeremy Au:

It's actually, it was easy listening in that sense, because I think the podcast folks have a rapport. David Sachs, obviously, and is positive for the Republicans from their perspective and his personal stance. And then you have Chamath, obviously, who is a little bit more focused on, I say, some of the economic aspects about it. Jason Calacanis is that, Jason is a democrat. And I think free bugs a little bit more neutral as well. So I thought it was a, I think the rapport of the podcast that they already had, plus Trump is, has always been a star in getting all the media and press attention, right? I mean, the news media stocks were at all time high under Trump because everybody kept tuning in during that time period.

(11:25) Shiyan Koh:

I don't know, Jeremy. If there's going to be a Singapore election, are we going to have some politicians on the pod? Will discuss technology policy with them?

(11:34) Jeremy Au:

I think interestingly, I have a good friend of mine, which is the Yah Lah But podcast, Haresh Tilani. He was on a podcast before. And I was just also scrolling through recently. And, Singapore has opposition party member PSP party. Leong Mun Wai hand was on the podcast chatting and he basically had to apologize for a remark that he had said and clarify that it was a joke rather than a real statement. But I thought he does a great job having a very kind of, very frank, real, a bit of comedy, very simple, straightforward conversation. So I think it's, I think politics is always an interesting piece. And from my reflection is two pieces. It's that a technology podcast is two things, right? One is, it's talking about technology for a general audience. That's one, or talking about tech for the context of a techie podcast. A second piece is that, as a tech podcast, you do represent the techie customer persona who may not just interested in tech, but also have similar thoughts or questions about global geopolitics and parenting and other stuff that doesn't feel like it's particularly about tech, but has an angle. And I think politicians do have a very strong, outcome on the rules and regulations revolving tech. So, maybe not, and I wouldn't say no to somebody who's a politician that has a strong point of view on technology, coming on the podcast.

(12:43) Shiyan Koh:

Alright. Let's do it. Let's invite them all.

(12:46) Jeremy Au:

Let's invite them all.

(12:47) Shiyan Koh:

Ask them about their views on AI, and jobs, and impact to Singaporeans.

(12:52) Jeremy Au:

Yeah. Yeah, no, it's a big one. But yeah, I think that Trump one would definitely be a big shift. I mean, one thing that I do think about quite a bit is that Trump has promised that if he comes into office, he wants to put a 10% tariff on all global imports into the US and he wants to put a 60% import tariff on China, which is, I think, a dramatic, huge, huge, huge, because it's not just the fact that those tariffs are off the scale in terms of how strong they are, it's just that, of course, there would be retaliations and tariffs by European Union, by China, for example. So it is really like a reversal of the globalization kind of like, let's lower tariffs. Let's, support the WTO, the World Trade Organization. Let's do more free trade agreements. I think definitely seeing, So I think that's something that's, I would say, underappreciated, underpriced from my perspective, which is that, let's say the 2 3rd chance that Trump wins. Then let's just say there's a 50 percent chance that Trump does carry out his electoral promises. And I think Trump has been shown that he does actually, articulate what he wants to do, and he does work to execute them as well. So let's just say there's a 50% chance he executes it. That means that as of today, I think there's a 1/3 chance of huge tariff changes effectively in Q1 of 2025, And I think that's a little bit underpriced for a lot of startups in Southeast Asia, if you think about it because as I say, you're doing, a, if you're doing shipping logistics, maybe you're not impacted directly per se, but you could be impacted like tariffs could, change the flow of traffic. I think if you're a Chinese citizen working in America right now, or you are a Chinese startup founder that has a Chinese business unit in America, then you got to do your business continuity planning as well.

(14:24) Shiyan Koh:

I think they're all doing that, right? I mean, I mean, maybe I discount that, but separate from the retaliation that actually has a real impact on actual American everyday consumers, like that will just raise prices in the US and inflation is the other thing that they're trying to fight. And so I don't know. Hard to believe he will do it across the board. I think it's actually quite hard to decouple China from the US. I think if you tried to only consume made in the US items, you would consume way, way, way less and at much higher prices. So I don't know. And I think for the Chinese companies, I think they all know that, right? Like GPs and funds that I know have spent time reconstituting their LP bases because of CFIUS and because of fears that the environment could get worse. And people choosing to go public, like Shuyin filed on London. Like people try to, I think everyone is preparing for that. What would you expect to see if it were priced correctly in your mind?

(15:13) Jeremy Au:

I think in that world, it would be a mixed outcome for Southeast Asia, right? So it depends on how he plays out. So I think Trump has made, kind of like, unpleasant noises about Vietnam. So he feels like a lot of the Vietnamese exports are China linked, which is true. I think a lot of Chinese factories are moving to Vietnam, for example. So it depends on whether Vietnam is caught in that "crossfire", which is that it gets lumped under that piece.

(15:36) Shiyan Koh:

But Chinese factories are also moving to Mexico to take advantage of NAFTA.

(15:38) Jeremy Au:

He's also going after Mexico. He's also going after Mexico. He's basically made the same complaint. He was like saying Mexico is full of Chinese factories. I think it's not just a country of location, which is how he's luckily is done, but it's also like the fact that Chinese capital, Chinese knowledge, Chinese management. So he's going to try to hunt that down to some extent. So I think that's a tricky part of this situation. It's very mixed. So I wouldn't necessarily know who benefits in Southeast Asia, but I just think that it was priced correctly. I think first of all, I would say that, a lot of the capital inflows in Southeast Asia has been twofold, right? One is, we believe that Southeast Asia is a great place to grow. That's one because of economic fundamentals. And the second piece is we want to have an investment in Asia, but we don't want it to be in China because we're worried of the monetary links and so forth by the government policy, right? So I think it was priced correctly. Probably is more upside for India , I would say, because, it implies that more money would flow to India because they can't access China or China-linked countries in Southeast Asia, but that could be one angle I could see it being priced.

I think in our way of being priced as well would probably be more like domestic manufacturing. So if that export is a 60% on China and 10% on global, then probably see more Chinese companies leaving China and setting up shop in Southeast Asia, probably.

(16:48) Shiyan Koh:

Oh, for sure. But you know, they're also doing it in the US like they're opening factories in the US and I think this is a, I don't know at what time, at what point does the American population say this is ridiculous. This doesn't actually make sense as policy, or you're, you're just like throw up your hands and you're like, Oh yeah, four more years of madness. And then he'll be termed out. And then maybe we'll, we'll see what we have to deal with. I think it's crazy, but, I mean, I did talk to friends in China who are like, Oh yeah, China is so ahead in some industrial areas. They're thinking about going to the US and starting a business there and using Chinese technology, since the US is going to invest in re-industrialization, why not take advantage of that additional investment and that macro, and leverage their assets, which is, industrial know-how from China and build in the US? And I was like, that is a hilarious and be American's nightmare.

(17:34) Jeremy Au:

Some people on that side of argument would argue that that's a desired goal, right? Which is that, you'll create American jobs.

(17:40) Shiyan Koh:

I think the net on the first round of Trump tariffs is that it did not create American jobs. Remember that Trump carrier factory photo op, where he's Oh, I'm going to stop the closure of this plant. It didn't. It actually imposed a higher cost on American consumers for their air cons and their like dishwashers or washing machines or whatever the case was. I think this is like an interesting, if you look at all the business school case studies that we've done. Toyota tried to set up their plant in Fremont. There's a Toyota Nummi plant in Fremont. They could never get the same levels of efficiency in Fremont that they did in their Japan plants. So it's not just Hey, CapEx in and transfer some operating system. The software, the people that matters and culture matters. I think the US is incredibly good at some things, and I don't know whether they haven't been good at manufacturing for a while. They'd actually have to build up that labor base and that capability in order to do that, and I don't know whether they have the attention span to do that.

(18:30) Jeremy Au:

Well, there's the argument, right? The argument that they have is that they do have the patience that we've got to squeeze out one end, which is the China end and then, subsidize on the US side, the reindustrialization, but like you said, I think there's a lot of dynamics where American MNCs have to balance that. I think the key learning for me is that is watching, for example, of Taiwanese companies leave Taiwan, because again, there's a risk of conflict and so forth, and they want to set up American plants, but they're finding it easier to either build those factories either in China or in Korea or in Japan because the labor base is more similar in terms of the composition. But also there's a lot more science and engineering graduates, engineers that you need to have. And then you need, obviously, the government planning, the policy, energy, the water usage.

(19:14) Shiyan Koh:

You need grid! Yeah, and basic stuff!

(19:16) Jeremy Au:

Yeah. You need industrial parks and you need your supplies to be there as well. So there's agglomeration of the entire supply chain that makes it easy for you to have the nuts and bolts and, power technician to come in at 3am in the morning because something went wrong. Those are hard things to move, not just a single company, but also the whole hub, right?

So yeah, if I was pricing it, maybe you can plus one to Korea, Japan, perhaps, in terms of, more manufacturing moving to them, I would say, because I can imagine a Chinese company moving to Korea, Japan, or Vietnam, and Cambodia, depending on where they are in technology stack.

(19:44) Shiyan Koh:

I think Vietnam has grid issues as well and I think they're trying to work to resolve that.

(19:48) Jeremy Au:

Yeah. I think last year they had brownouts and this time around they haven't reached a power cut level, but, imagine like they've been sending letters to the manufacturers saying, Hey, can you cut power usage by 20%, and then obviously as a manufacturer, you're like, wait a moment, if I'm getting a letter to please reduce my power usage by 20%, I don't want to put in a new factory because the last thing I want is a power cut.

And of course, the way Vietnam is solving right now is basically at an all time high burning coal because, there's coal imports, they have coal plants that's running. So that at an all time high using coal to make up for the energy, which makes sense, if you're looking at it because they're going off the manufacturing first industrial plan, right?

(20:24) Shiyan Koh:

Yeah, we live in interesting times.

(20:26) Jeremy Au:

Yeah, I think supply chain managers is having a very interesting time for the past, you had COVID obviously, and before that you had the Trump tariffs as well. And then after that, now you have the Middle East conflict and the closing of a whole shipping route. And then now you have this electoral dynamic. I think supply chain management has been a very complex job, I would say. So maybe, , I know I have definitely included this as part of their pitches. And I've been, you you know, it's hey, you know, you have a container ship and then you keep having random stuff happening. Is your container going to arrive in 20 days or like a hundred days, right?

I think data security as well is another one, and investment flows. So obviously we see a whole bunch of VC funds all like fragment in order to accommodate the decoupling side. So I wonder if there's more of that going to happen that's one. And then two is, information flows, right? So maybe data security, cloud, like sovereignty. So is there gonna be more fragmentation of cloud services? Maybe it is more difficult or better for AWS, I don't know. But you can imagine that if your startup is combining, doing AI training on different nationalities, as your customer profile, there could be another angle that could happen if we're doing and seeing more decoupling.

(21:27) Shiyan Koh:

Yeah, I mean I think just even more than before, right? You're just gonna have to pick your markets more carefully. I think we need something uplifting, Jeremy. Let's end on something positive.

(21:35) Jeremy Au:

Okay. How our kids? It should be better. I think it is a match of progress, right? Technology is getting better. Productivity is still getting better. People are still entrepreneurial. Maybe in a short term, it's all painful, but, over the course of say, 30 years, all our kids grew up, generation alpha, generation AI native as well. Maybe there'll be in a better world.

(21:53) Shiyan Koh:

I hope so. We have to do an episode on climate change.

(21:56) Jeremy Au:

It's real. And then it just ends up the 30 seconds of us saying that is real.

(21:59) Shiyan Koh:

It's real. What can we do?

(22:01) Jeremy Au:

That's the whole episode. And then the last sentence is like, what do we do about it? And then the podcast ends.

(22:05) Shiyan Koh:

Nuclear.

(22:06) Jeremy Au:

Nuclear. Solar. I think things will get better over the course of 30 years.

(22:10) Shiyan Koh:

I mean, I hope so, right?

(22:11) Jeremy Au:

Yeah. I'm just like, it's just imagine you're like, I'll be like, remind me in 30 years, the outcome of this prediction, and then, flash forward 30 years and then she and Jeremy listening to our walking around this nuclear wasteland with our old airpods pro and we're listening to this podcast and like, dang it, Jeremy, you got it so wrong.

(22:28) Shiyan Koh:

If it's a nuclear wasteland, we're not strolling around. in a bunker somewhere.

(22:32) Jeremy Au:

And then you curse and swear at me. It's like you jinxed it, Jeremy. I think it would be a better world. I'll say that. I think it would be a better world in 30 years. I'll vote for her, not for that.

(22:40) Shiyan Koh:

I mean, that's a bet on human ingenuity, right? That people are gonna pull it together.

(22:44) Jeremy Au:

Yeah. This is, that's going to happen for a few more years. Like whatever this is. And then, then some, that will happen for another X number of years. And then it kind of like, then it was like Yin and Yang, ups and downs.

(22:54) Shiyan Koh:

Now you're just hand-waving.

(22:57) Jeremy Au:

I don't know.

(22:57) Shiyan Koh:

This happen and then that'll happen and yeah, yeah, it'll be fine.

(23:01) Jeremy Au:

It's like Jeremy became a Taoist, basically global geopolitics. Yeah.

(23:05) Shiyan Koh:

Cool.

(23:05) Jeremy Au:

Okay. All right. See you around for the next time, Shiyan.

(23:07) Shiyan Koh:

Take it easy.