You want depressing? We give you the Suez Canal’s battle with Panama. The Suez Canal posted tepid growth of about 2.2% in the first nine months of this year, the latest in a string of figures that have disappointed some analysts since the opening of the “New” Suez Canal. Breezy throwaway lines about slow growth somehow being linked to a slowdown in global trade post the global financial crisis tell only part of the story, the Wall Street Journal suggests, declaring that some “ocean operators [are] switching sailings from Suez as bigger ships can cross new Panama locks to reach the U.S. East Coast.” Tonnage at the Panama Canal is up 23% since the start of this year after a nine-year, USD 5.4 bn expansion program that has made it possible for ships 3x larger than before to transit.

From 53k containers a week before the expansion, the Panama Canal handled 58k containers in September, the Journal says, and “much of the increase was from ship diversions from the Suez in Egypt, where weekly capacity from Asia to the U.S. East Coast fell by nearly 18% in September since the [Panama] locks opened to about 30,400 containers.”