Ryan Bridge: Things are about to get a whole lot more expensive

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Recorded03 May 2026

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I have good news and bad news for you this morning. The good news, I was out shopping on the weekend, which means I didn't actually buy anything but drove halfway across town looking for a bed-head, couldn't find one that fit, and went home empty-handed. But the good news is the shops I visited were full of people spending money. Hardware store. Full. Furniture store, less full but still busy. The Devil Wears Prada on Saturday night was 100% booked out for sessions running almost on the hour. I've never rated Anne Hathaway's acting chops, but literally thousands of middle-aged women, glass of Savvy Bin hand, clearly did. A survey out today says retailers are worried about the fuel shock, but I didn't see much reason to be freaking out o the weekend. Now the bad news, all the stuff we buy in this country comes by sea. All the trinkets and furniture and non-perishables come over the ocean, because we're a, yah know, an island. More than 80% of our trade is done on a ship, by value and weight. Half of that trade - imports and exports - is done by the shipping giant Maersk. In a little-reported note to customers Friday, Maersk is slapping an almost 30% fuel surcharge on to inland transport. The fuel bill for imports is increasing 27%. The Aussies' is going up 18%. This cost gets added to all the stuff we buy. So anything in country right now will be cheaper than anything that's about to be sent here. They started the new charging rate on Friday. Which does make my weekend in busy shops and gay old time at the pictures on Saturday night feel somewhat like, to use another movie analogy, a dinner party aboard the Titanic as it listed into the Atlantic ocean. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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