Shipping: Globalization’s Lifeblood

From refrigerated freighters and container ships to car carriers and supertankers, the world’s shipping industry has played an incredibly key role in transporting 90% of the world’s food, products and energy while helping to transform the global economy along the way. Each year, some 86,000 ships move more than 9 billion tons of cargo – more than a ton for each person on the planet – across our seas each year. These facts are brought home in entertaining detail in a new book by Lori Ann LaRocco called Dynasties of the Sea: The Shipowners and Financiers Who Expanded the Era of Free Trade. Learn why shipping may well be the bellweather to our economic recovery.