Image by Nathan Cima for Unsplash

You can tell a lot about a subject just by looking at its exceptions, and trade, similarly, can be understood only by looking at maritime choke points. Every year, millions of products make their way across the ocean, reaching virtually every country on Earth. However, they don’t do so in an even pattern, prioritizing each corner of the seas equally. On the contrary, there are a number of crucial points that shape global trade and, in turn, are crucial to the free flow of goods.

These areas are commonly referred to as “choke points," since they concentrate vast numbers of vessel traffic each year. Were any of said choke points to suffer a disruption, even if just for a day, they could inhibit the flow of anywhere between 4,950 and 258,000 metric tons of cargo—considering the least traffic-prone point (the Ombai Strait) and the most traffic prone (the Dover Strait). Thus, if any disruption were to affect these routes, global trade would start to suffer.

Given their importance, we decided to plot these routes based on the most recent data for vessel traffic from the IMF. In all, the IMF identifies 24 different choke points to global trade, all of which we plotted below based on the number of vessels that cross through them each year. Some points ought to be intuitive to most logistics experts, including the Panama and Suez Canals, as well as the Straits of Gibraltar and Malacca. Others might come as a surprise, as the great number of Straits in the South China Sea, or those in the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean. But, together, these points represent the most holistic depiction of global trade and the free flow of goods in modern times. 

In the map below, you can interact with each point and see the main industries for which such areas are important:

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At a first glance, this map already suggests a number of crucial findings about the geography of global trade. By and large, it seems to be the case that choke points are concentrated in Asia, with a particular emphasis on the waters around China, as well as the archipelagos that make up Malaysia and Indonesia. In fact, some 48% of all choke points accounted for by the IMF are found in Asian waters, making it by far the most important region to global trade—not surprising when one considers China is the largest exporter in the world. It is followed by the Middle East and North Africa, both of which have some 13% of choke points in the map.

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These trends, quite crucially, hold steady across a number of different trade practices. Often, when we speak of maritime trade, we tend to focus solely on containerized cargo, which is the most common—and efficient—means to transport the vast majority of goods around the world. However, shipping containers are just a fraction of maritime activity. In the choke points we considered, in fact, they accounted for just 21% of all vessel traffic. Chemical and oil tankers were, in fact, the most important vessel category, representing 30% of activity. They were followed by dry bulk carriers (vessels moving large amounts of solid cargo like grain or metallic ores), which account for 29% of traffic. Thus, trade is far more than just containers, and disruptions can impact other important areas to the global economy beyond consumer goods think of our energy supply or stock of food.

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However, if we focus not on the number of vessels or quantity of choke points on the map, we can discover broader trends about trade. While the Straits of Taiwan, Korea, and Malacca, take the leading positions when it comes to the sheer number of vessels crossing through them, they lose their leadership in terms of tons of cargo. When looking at the quantity of goods being carried, the Dover Strait in Northern Europe jumps to the top position of the ranking, followed by Korea and Taiwan. Similarly, the Strait of Gibraltar in the Mediterranean, goes from being the sixth most important in terms of vessel traffic, to the fourth most important in terms of cargo. This suggests, in turn, that while Asia might be a leading region for vessel traffic, Europe still plays a crucial role when it comes to cargo and consumption.

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Similarly, one could make the case that, thus far, we’ve focused just on the yearly magnitudes of trade without acknowledging how prone these routes might be to disruptions. To understand this latter point, we looked more closely at IMF data showing daily vessel transits in these choke points. With this information, we were able to calculate the standard deviation for each port in the year 2023 and thus far in 2024. This measures gives us an idea of which choke points are most variant in the number of vessels that cross them per day and, in turn, might serve as a key indicator of which are most prone to disruptions.

In doing so, we found that the Taiwan and Korea Straits were, once again, leading the curve albeit both decreased their unreliability in 2024. Conversely, the Strait of Malacca has seen a drastic increase in variance over the course of 2024, likely the result of congestions in the region after the Suez Canal became effectively blocked by rebel attacks in the Bab El-Mandeb Strait. The same is true of the Cape of Good Hope which, after the Red Sea became prone to disruptions, soon rose to prominence as an alternative trade route to reach Europe.

These points, put together, account for the bulk of trade, and, despite being few in number, hold a disproportionate weight to the global economy. In turn, they show us the importance of certain areas of the world and how, were any of them to be disrupted, they could result in large damage to the global economy. On average, even a one day disruption in any of these choke points could impact 77,019 tons of cargo in transit. 

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So, in summary, while we’ve grown increasingly reliant on the oceans to enable global trade, our trade routes have, in turn, grown increasingly reliant on a number of choke points. We at Desteia believe that companies should closely monitor all of these choke points closely if they hope to avoid potential disruptions in the near future. That is why we are building cutting edge tools to provide users complete visibility to their logistical processes, including potential disruptions in these choke points—and far, far beyond.