Weft has developed a real-time ranking of global container ports. It is intended to provide companies with data related to such processes as procurement, contract negotiations and other shipment-planning decisions.

Import cargo volume at the nation's major retail container ports is expected to decline year-over-year for the next few months, but the first half of the year should still amount to a 4.5-percent increase compared with the same period last year, according to the monthly Global Port Tracker report released by the National Retail Federation and Hackett Associates.

Claims related to the massive explosion at the port of Tianjin, China, may grow to as much as $6bn, says the International Union of Marine Insurance (IUMI). More than half of the claims reportedly fall within marine insurance or reinsurance lines - potentially making it the largest single marine disaster (by claim value) in history, surpassing Hurricane Sandy.

In the Superman comics, the Bizarro World is a planet where normal people and events become strangely inverted. Which, in the world of global trade and supply chain, appears to be happening with increasing regularity.

With the holiday season over, import cargo volume at the nation's major retail container ports is expected to slowly decline through the first quarter of the year, according to the monthly Global Port Tracker report released by the National Retail Federation and Hackett Associates.

Stakeholders at U.S. ports are spending $9bn a year to accommodate the next generation of super-sized container ships. But simply expanding physical infrastructure will not be enough to mitigate port congestion. With fewer vessels moving more containers per call, U.S. ports need to fundamentally change the way containers are moved in and out of terminals.