Since the second half of 2026, Middle East route ocean freight rates have surged more than 50%, with some 40-foot container fees surpassing 10,000 US dollars and in places exceeding the value of the cargo itself, a report on September 5 said.
Reduced effective capacity from dual risks in the Hormuz Strait and Red Sea has driven the spike. As a bellwether of small-commodity exports, Yiwu has seen visibly weaker orders, with the thin-margin small-goods sector hit hardest by the inversion of freight cost and cargo value.
In response, exporters are accelerating overseas-warehouse deployment and multimodal transport to buffer volatility, while some are rerouting or shifting product mix toward higher-value goods to absorb the higher logistics cost - a reminder that external shocks still test the resilience of the world's largest small-commodity hub.
Image: Overview of Yiwu International Trading Town, the world's largest small-commodity market. Source: Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0).
