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The diplomatic dispute brewing between Algeria and France has impacted a potential investment by the CMA CGM in the Algerian port sector. The French ship[ping company was reported to be negotiating a concession for the port of Oran through its subsidiary CMA Terminals, but the deal has been on hold as tensions rise between the two countries.

Early this week, the CEO of CMA CGM Rodolphe Saadé was scheduled to visit Algeria for a business trip. However, the visit was reportedly postponed as relations between Algeria and France further deteriorated this week. According to local media reports, Rodolphe Saadé was to be received by Algerian President Abdelmadjid Tebboune to finalize a port investment deal, which has been under negotiations for nearly a year.

The diplomatic incident emerged as Algeria protested after one of its consular staff was arrested in France. The indictment of the official was over suspicion of involvement in the kidnapping of an Algerian government critic in Paris in April 2024. This has seen the two countries expel diplomats from both sides in a tit-for-tat move.

The diplomatic dispute also appears to have taken an economic dimension. The Algerian Economic Renewal Council (CREA), the country’s largest business organization, canceled its planned visit to France next month, where it was to hold a meeting with the French employers’ association (MEDEF). CREA accused French authorities of blocking investments in Algeria.

“The cancellation of the trip follows measures taken by French authorities, who strongly pressured a French maritime transport company to abandon its trip to Algeria to finalize an investment project,” said CREA. With the ongoing tension between Algeria and France, and Saadé’s visit on hold, the negotiations for the port concession are expected to be delayed.

CMA CGM is already present in nine Algerian ports including Algiers, Annaba, Béjaïa, Skikda, and Ghazaouet. The interest in Oran is because of the port’s strategic location in the Western Mediterranean and its proximity to Europe. CMA CGM is believed to be considering a feeder shipping line between Marseille and Oran, to be operated by its subsidiary, La Méridionale.

American importers are beginning to delay or cancel orders in China due to the White House's new 145 percent tariff on Chinese goods - and some U.S. firms may even abandon import cargo on the dock because they can't afford to pay the extra duties, though the White House has promised an exemption for goods already in transit.

Even before the latest hike, Chinese manufacturers faced a tariff of 20 percent from earlier White House actions. Many have already discounted their goods to the lowest profitable price in order to offset the effects. "It is a deal breaker," toy factory owner Chen Qingxin told the Wall Street Journal. "No room for doing business anymore, for both sides."

Given the effective doubling of their wholesale costs, American retailers are already beginning to cancel or defer orders. E-commerce giant Amazon began to revoke orders this week, according to Bloomberg, and has already canceled shipments of summer goods like air conditioners, beach chairs and scooters.

Exporters in China are also adapting to a new reality. "All factory orders are suspended. Any goods that have not been loaded will be cancelled and goods that are already at sea will be re-priced," one manufacturing executive told SCMP. "The loss on each container we ship is now greater than the profit we used to make on two containers." He added that his firm has heard from at least one U.S. client that the goods would be abandoned on the dock when they arrived because the tariffs make them too expensive to sell.

"The major trend we see is shippers looking to not accept their freight," supply chain consultant Joseph Esteves told CNBC. "A lot of these companies are levered financially. They don’t have the working capital requirements and they don’t have the cash. So they simply cannot just take on this [tariff] and hope to see what happens."

The steep tariff on China may force U.S. importers to diversify their supply chains to other alternatives, like Cambodia and Vietnam, already popular options for the "China plus one" diversified sourcing strategy. But there is little chance that more low-end consumer goods will end up being produced in America, some in the supply chain business say.

"They’re absolutely not going to go back to the United States," said Casey Barnett, president of the American Chamber of Commerce in Cambodia, told CNBC. "I can’t imagine that Americans want to sit down and sew a pair of sweatpants for long hours of the day."

China has also imposed its own retaliatory tariff of 84 percent on U.S. goods, and the increased cost is expected to hit agricultural interests hard, particularly soybean farmers. U.S. manufacturers may also feel the effects of a slowdown. In California, a leading maker of CNC industrial machine tools - Haas Automation - has announced that it is scaling back hiring, production and overtime because of a "dramatic decrease in demand for our machine tools from both domestic and foreign customers."

The latest Chinese port operation to come under pressure is Australia’s Port of Darwin which is now a headline issue in the upcoming federal elections. Today, April 4, Australia’s Prime Minister Anthony Albanese declared during a radio interview that Darwin “should be in Australian hands.” Concerns have been brewing over the now decade-old deal that ceded control of the port to a Chinese company.

Located on Australia’s north central coast the port while small in scope is seen as a strategic asset. It is Australia’s closest port to Asia and is playing an increasingly significant role in Australia’s expanding offshore oil and gas sector. In the port’s last fiscal year ended in 2024, it reported imports of more than 1 million kiloliters of petroleum products, handling over 280,000 head of cattle and being a major RoRo import operator for cars. It is a base to U.S. Marines and also a popular cruise ship destination.

Faced with financial difficulties, the government of Australia’s Northern Territories put out a public tender in 2014 and the following year concluded a deal with a Chinese company Landbridge. The operator gained a 99-year lease for the port and promised to make investments. Reports indicate that the U.S. with then-President Barack Obama voiced concerns over the Chinese deal.

Accusations have been raised about the operations with the Australian opposition party contending that Landbridge has failed to make the promised investments. In 2024 there were questions when Landbridge’s parent company went into default on an A$107 million (US$65 million) bond.

The company said in November 2024 that the “underlying operations of Darwin Port have improved significantly,” while reporting a nearly 50 percent increase in EBITDA earnings for FY 24. It blamed non-cash charges for an A$34 million (US$21 million) loss before taxes and said “Darwin Port remains a key asset of the group.”

Prime Minister Albanese announced the federal government is in talks with private pension fund investors on a possible deal to take over the operational lease for the port. He said the options were private investment or the federal government taking over the port. When asked in 2023, Albanese had ruled out a similar move to regain control of the port.

Opposition leaders have already spoken publicly about the need for the federal government to take control back from the Chinese. Media reports indicate they were going to make a formal public statement this coming Sunday, April 6, ahead of the May 3 federal elections.

Media reports said in March the federal government had discussions with the new government of the Northern Territory over possible steps. This came after Federal Labor MP Luke Gosling also made a public statement saying the federal government wanted to “return the port to Australian hands.”

Responding to the statements and media speculation, Terry O’Connor, Non-Executive Director for Landbridge in Australia, issued a statement in March calling the minister’s statement “a surprise,” and he asserted “Landbridge and Darwin Port have not been involved in any discussions on the matter.” He said they would engage with the Northern Territory government but the “port is not for sale.”

A local news outlet, NT News, however early in March reported Landbridge “could be willing to sell the port’s lease, but was asking A$1.3 billion (US$795 million). Reports indicate that is nearly A$800 million (approximately US$490 million) more than it paid in 2015 for the 99-year lease.