- In today’s CEO Daily: Diane Brady talks to Navios Maritime Partners CEO Angeliki Frangou.
- The big story: The U.S. now has a “Strategic Bitcoin Reserve.”
- The markets: Stocks sink as the tariff picture changes by the hour.
- Analyst notes from UBS on Trump’s auto tariff pause, Barclays on uncertainty, Bank of America and Saxo on the massive German bond sale, and EY on stagflation.
- Plus: All the news and watercooler chat from Fortune.
Good morning. If you want some insight into the choppy waters of global trade, talk to a leader in the shipping industry. Since the death of Aristotle Onassis in 1975, they have toiled in relative obscurity. But in the new era of tariffs, shifting supply chains, and geopolitical instability, their work—keeping Fortune 500 companies connected—has given them a higher profile.
About 90% of the world’s goods are transported by sea, many in ships that are owned and operated by Greek companies. Angeliki Frangou, a fourth-generation shipowner and the CEO of Piraeus, Greece-based Navios Maritime Partners, has navigated through COVID shutdowns, tariff wars, actual wars, geopolitical tension, climate change and piracy on the high seas—among other things. Her business—an NYSE-listed giant with 180 bulkers, tankers and container ships—is constantly in the news. “We never make policy, but we have to anticipate it,” she says.
What’s different about 2025, she says, is the degree of variability. “This is the first time in my experience that we didn't look at world GDP, industrial production, the usual supply and demand characteristics,” says Frangou. “Now, we look at how geopolitical events will be resolved. Will there be more sanctions, less sanctions? Tariffs? We look at the world and we say, what is the spectrum of probabilities, and the worst-case scenario that can take me down?”
Take the Middle East conflict, which has impacted the security of merchant ships along the Strait of Hormuz, the world’s most important oil-shipping route. Says Frangou: “The effective closure of the Red Sea alone meant that every vessel had to go around Africa, adding about 10 days.”
Now add in volatility around tariffs and trade, including White House plans to boost U.S. shipbuilding and levy hefty fees on Chinese-made vessels, which account for 41.5% of the world’s in-service fleet. “This will affect a huge percentage of shipping,” Frangou says. “We have Japanese vessels in China, Chinese vessels in Japan … If there is this huge taxation for incoming vessels to the United States, most vessels will use a port in the Caribbean somewhere, unload the cargo in transit, and then use a Japanese or a South Korean vessel to bring it into the United States. That means two or three days to unload and then two to three days to reload, which adds costs and prolongs the trip.”
But Frangou doesn’t sound fearful. “We are the ultimate capitalists because you need to compete with everyone on a global level,” she says. “The only way to achieve that is with technology. AI will bring huge changes in the way we move from being reactive to more proactive.”
More news below.
Contact CEO Daily via Diane Brady at diane.brady@fortune.com
