Bab el-Mandeb / Suez
High risk~12% of global trade in normal conditions
Houthi attacks and naval escorts have pushed most container lines around the Cape, lifting Asia–Europe freight and war-risk insurance premiums.
Economy
Trade, growth and the price of instability
Where the world's money moves, which chokepoints it moves through, and how quickly a security shock turns into a food or fuel price at the household level.
$24.4tn
World merchandise trade
Goods exports, 2024 — WTO Global Trade Outlook
$8.7tn
Commercial services trade
Services exports, 2024 — WTO / UNCTAD
~58%
Trade as share of world GDP
Exports + imports of goods and services — World Bank
~80%
Seaborne share of world trade
By volume — UNCTAD Review of Maritime Transport
-55%
Suez / Bab el-Mandeb transits
Versus pre-2024 baseline after Red Sea attacks — IMF PortWatch
+10–14 days
Cape of Good Hope rerouting
Added voyage time on Asia–Europe strings — Clarksons / carrier advisories
Major economies — live World Bank figures
Most recent published year per country, pulled from the World Bank API at page load.
Source: World Bank Open Data · data.worldbank.org
Trade corridors and chokepoints
Strait of Hormuz
High risk~20% of global oil and a fifth of LNG
No practical bypass at scale. Any closure would be the single largest energy price shock available to a state actor.
Strait of Malacca
Medium risk~25% of traded goods, most East Asian energy imports
A Taiwan contingency would put this corridor under immediate naval pressure and reprice Asian manufacturing.
Black Sea grain corridor
Medium riskWheat, maize and sunflower oil for North Africa and the Horn
Ukrainian exports run under a unilateral corridor hugging NATO coastlines; disruption transmits into Horn of Africa food prices within weeks.
Panama Canal
Medium risk~5% of global trade
Drought-driven draft and slot restrictions have made climate a recurring throughput constraint alongside geopolitics.
Djibouti–Addis corridor
Elevated riskOver 85% of Ethiopian trade
Landlocked Ethiopia's port access is a live diplomatic issue, driving the Berbera and Assab discussions and regional friction.
Commodity transmission channels
- Brent crudeHormuz risk premium, OPEC+ quotas, demand from China
- LNGEuropean storage cycles, Qatari routing through the Red Sea
- WheatBlack Sea exports, Indian export policy, Horn drought cycles
- FertiliserGas prices, Russian and Belarusian potash sanctions
- GoldCentral-bank buying and safe-haven demand during escalation
- Container freightRed Sea rerouting, capacity deliveries, Chinese export volume
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