Episode Transcript
[00:00:03] Speaker A: Hello, I'm Mike King with the Freight Buyers Club. We're reporting live here from Munich at Transport Logistic. And I'm here with Lars Carlsen who's the global head of trade and customs consulting at Maersk. Hello, Lars. Welcome to the Freight Buyers Club.
[00:00:16] Speaker B: Thank you very much. Great to be here.
[00:00:18] Speaker A: Lars has just done a fantastic TED talk about navigating uncertainty in this rather crazy 2025.
Lars, could you expound a little bit on some of the key points that you made there? And maybe we could look at this in what are the knowns and the unknowns in terms of uncertainty right now in 2025?
[00:00:39] Speaker B: No, obviously many people think about the tariffs because customs is finally in the place where it should be, in the middle of world news and so forth.
But there's more than that. It's just the tip of the iceberg. There's many other things happening. There will be even more changes coming along and that is ESG regulations, environment, social protection and governance. There are sanctions, there's a number of other things that is hitting international trade.
And of course in many ways that's a challenge for our customers, for traders all around the world to do that. But of course tariffs comes on top of that and there's a lot of uncertainty around it. But it's also possible to actually handle it. So it can be something you can transform from being a challenge to actually be an opportunity. If you are ahead of the curve and if you actually know what you're doing, if you own your own data and you also in various ways can manage your stakeholder network in a different way than before, which we can today, then there's opportunities as well.
[00:01:37] Speaker A: I'll come back to how you mitigate risk. Can you just explain why owning your own data is so important?
[00:01:42] Speaker B: Because many of the times when we talk about customs, customs have been segmented, it's been decentralized over the times for various reasons.
And the problem with that is that you do think you have a good broker or a good freight forwarder that actually handling this for you. But they've been very much either at origin or destination, which means that they don't have the full picture. They're not looking into what's happening at the other end of the of the journey of that goods. And that is what you need to do today. Look at the full supply chain, all tiers of the supply chain from a customs perspective. And of course one of the problems with that in itself is that you really don't know what is going on. So when I Ask customers of us, how many brokers do you have? They say maybe 50, 60, and that is way too many because they can't manage and control that. And when you ask if they own their own data, they say, no, it's with the broker. And I say, well, it should be with you. Right, because data is basically the new gold in the bank. You need it to be able and manage your compliance, but also to pay the right tariffs when tariffs are moving up and down like they are right now. So it's all about having control over your network, having control over your data. And if you don't do it yourself, just find a partner that you can trust that actually have solutions that are not local, but global or regional instead.
[00:02:57] Speaker A: And can you just give us some insight into the operations? Obviously, Maersk is a huge conglomerate. You've got your shipping side, you've got your supply chain side. How is this uncertain tariff landscape, particularly how has that affected your operations? And what are you doing to resolve those bottlenecks?
[00:03:15] Speaker B: No, absolutely, what we've seen, of course it is impacting because it is uncertainty. That is a problem. People are waiting and they shouldn't wait. It should be proactive. It's very important to actually act at this moment, not sit and wait and see what's going to happen. Because the solutions that is needed for this are the same solutions that were there before. It's just been accelerated. So we in Maersk, we see that of course, goods going from Asia to North America has gone down, but on the other hand, we also see that goods in the rest of the world has gone up. So of course, I always say trade finds its way, right, it's like water, but important to do it in a correct way to be compliant. Because there's also much more enforcement in place when tariffs goes up, when new regulations, restrictions and sanctions comes in play. And it means that you play a very dangerous game if you're not compliant. So again, it's important to remember that 13% of world trade is related to us, but 87 is not.
So, of course, there's also still developments here that trade streams, they change in different ways. And what we do is looking into data, again, as I said, right. So we are looking into customs and borders as an example, from origin to destination. So we have today 2,700,700 people working with customs. We have solutions and platforms that actually pick up data at the region source. And we do upstream scanning and screening for risks and opportunities on tariffs optimization and engineering as well. And we do it early in the process. Right. So you do not end up in problems later with delays, with penalties or paying too much. And we got to remember that companies are overpaying already before these tariffs actually went up. There are studies showing that 5, 6% overpayment is the average actually for a company because it's too complicated to use free trade agreements, to use different other type of means and simplifications. But that is now changing and we can do that with using platforms, connecting data, use and reuse data. We already have using artificial intelligence and systems to actually optimize the system. Totally different use and reuse data all through the process. And that brings costs down. So we can save a lot of money on this.
[00:05:27] Speaker A: I think we. I was going to ask you how would SME shippers, for example, best mitigate risk? But I think the answer is probably Maersk might be the answer here. That's a good idea.
I will ask you a different question instead. If you're looking at risk through the rest of 2025 or early 2026, where do you see the biggest risks?
[00:05:47] Speaker B: No, I think that you're right that tariffs will still be in center of this. But it's the same solution again. You need to classify your goods correctly, which is the basic customs process. Right? You need to know what goods you are, so you control your product network and product themselves. Where do they come from? What's the carbon emission footprint on them? If you don't have it, ask somebody. Make sure you have a trusted partner that can help you. And of course Maersk is a good solution and a good partner to have. And the reason for that is that we actually do other things for these clients as well. So we do move their goods, we help them with sourcing strategies, we help them with a number of services where we already have knowledge about the customers and also small and medium sized customers, not only big ones, but basically the integrated value chain itself. So I think that what companies need to think about, be proactive, do not sit and wait, look into these things. If you don't have the competence, find it. Find a partner you can trust that have solutions that is not local, but actually regional or global. At least have access to that and work through systems and networks that has.
[00:06:51] Speaker A: Lars Carlsen, global head of Trade and Customs consulting at Maers, thanks very much for joining me today on the Freight Buyers Club.
[00:06:58] Speaker B: Brilliant. Thank you very much. Anytime.
