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Consistent fatigue creates a ‘non-shock value’ to Trump 2.0 for shipping lawyers
The job description for shipping lawyers involves constantly pivoting in the face of overnight geopolitical and legal changes, but after five years of constant changes, fatigue has set in, and the frequency of pivoting is losing its charm.
Kace O'Neill
On a recent episode of The Lawyers Weekly Show, host Jerome Doraisamy spoke with The Shipping Lawyer, Alison Cusack, to discuss how the second term of Donald Trump’s presidency could affect the shipping law landscape in 2025.
Cusack touched on the various intricacies that can flip the shipping world on its head, forcing shipping lawyers to adapt.
“[In the past] the shipping industry used to be somewhat predictable. It was cyclical. Now, it seems to zig when we think it’s going to zag. Anytime it’s a bit too quiet, it feels like a toddler that you’ve got to keep your eye on,” said Cusack.
“The big-ticket items were the [International Longshoremen’s Association] strikes in the US between the port operators and the longshoremen [which] caused a huge backlog because every day you’re offline is a couple of days in recovery. Then they had talks and they’ve come to a tentative agreement but it wasn’t ratified. And any lawyer will say, well, it’s not over until the dotted line is signed.
“So, I’m still waiting until they’ve officially ratified that. And that’s a six-year contract because that takes off 50 per cent of ports in the US offline. You might think, well, but that’s in the US; we export to the US, we import from the US, so it also has a flow-on because we’re so hyper-connected.”
In Australia over the past year, workplace relations across various industries were at a knife’s edge, with unions and their members committing or proclaiming they were going to commit to industrial action. This, of course, has an impact on the shipping space.
“Union issues have all been happening around Australia. Whilst sometimes the union strikes don’t go ahead, the threatened action causes consequences because people anticipate being offline and what that would mean and shift their cargo around,” said Cusack.
In terms of Trump’s effect on the shipping industry, Cusack said that regardless of his actions – little will change with her approach. However, she fears that the consistent fatigue that has loaded up since 2020 regarding the industry may be affecting her clients.
“I will admit to an element of fatigue, and that’s not necessarily from the lawyers, but from the clients – there has been consistent fatigue since 2020. There has been a high demand on pivoting and pivoting and changing and adapting. The industry has not caught a break in the last four years,” said Cusack.
“I do think one of the biggest risk factors is just that consistent cumulative toll on the mental load of the client because they will be at decision fatigue. They might just disengage altogether and go, ‘I can’t be bothered with this anymore. I can’t keep up,’ and just let the chips fall where they may. ‘I’m done, I’m tired.’
“So, I think that’s going to be a fatigue problem, especially because I feel that President Donald Trump does come out with a lot of strategy ideas, and they come very thick and fast, probably more so at a rapid rate than, say, other politicians.
“That might add to the fatigue because they don’t know which ones he’s going to focus on and implement. How do you manage the risk rating? We’ve got strikes, we’ve got tariffs, we’ve got the Panama Canal, we’ve got Greenland, we’ve got the Arctic expansion. How do you focus them on one thing and not just have that? I’m tapping out.”
The situation painted by Cusack gives an overwhelming feel, yet despite the challenges the shipping industry presents, she has a few strategies on how to efficiently deal with it.
“It does get challenging when you want to keep your finger on the pulse, mainly because there’s such an avalanche of information that you’re sort of pulled in all directions. This is where it’s really good to have key contacts who put out really good summaries that you know you can lean on if you want to keep that high-level awareness factor,” said Cusack.
