Ship operators are trading greenhouse gas emissions reductions for time. A historic new agreement at the International Maritime Organization puts the global shipping industry on a path to slash carbon emissions in half, the WSJ’s Costas Paris reports, setting in motion a compromise plan for a sector that was excluded from the Paris climate agreement in 2015. The IMO won near-unanimous agreement on a deal aimed at cutting carbon emissions in half by 2050, a plan the maritime industry says will cost billions of dollars and likely make shipping much more expensive. That impact could take many years, and maybe decades, to ripple across the business. But the target is based on the 2008 emissions level, when shipping activity hit a peak and before a new generation of cleaner vessels hit the water, suggesting the reductions may be closer than they appear.
The blockchain race is coming to your coffee mug. A Denver shop is offering what it calls “the world’s first blockchain-traced coffee,” WSJ Logistics Report’s Erica E. Phillips writes, adding little Coda Coffee Co. to the list of companies that include Starbucks Corp. and other corporate giants that are testing the cloud-based ledger technology. The shop is bidding to tap into the growing consumer push to get better information on where their food comes from—and to tap into the big attention that blockchain has gotten in the corporate and investment worlds. Maersk Line, Cargill Inc. and auto makers are among those exploring the potential for blockchain technology to track goods through complicated supply chains, and make the handling of goods through several tiers of suppliers more transparent. And even small operators like Coda Coffee are trying to see if the system brings them some steam.
President Donald Trump may be taking aim at Amazon.com Inc. with his order to review U.S. Postal Service finances, but other parcel carriers are in the line of fire. FedEx Corp. and United Parcel Service Inc. both get discount rates like Amazon, the WSJ’s Paul Ziobro and Laura Stevens report, under a program that lets them drop truckloads of packages at local post offices for the last leg of delivery. The Parcel Select service gives the operators from 5% to 10% off published rates, a common practice in shipping contracts. UPS and FedEx have long argued that the Postal Service should charge more, in part because it would drive more volume to their own networks. It would also allow UPS and FedEx to raise their own rates. The risk is that higher Parcel Select charges also would raise the private carriers’ costs.
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Merchants selling on sites like Amazon.com Inc.’s marketplace face a day of reckoning at the U.S. Supreme Court. Justices will hear arguments this week on South Dakota’s attempt to overturn a 26-year-old precedent under which states can’t require retailers to collect sales taxes unless the companies have a physical presence in the state. The WSJ’s Richard Rubin and Laura Stevens report that tax and legal experts expect the court to overturn the precedent, potentially changing the financial landscape for a big swath of digital commerce. Current tax rules date from the era of mail-order catalogs, and they have helped fuel the rise of internet commerce and spurred frustration among brick-and-mortar retailers. Amazon already collects sales taxes on its own product, as do big-box retailers. But sales by third-party retailers fall outside the reach of sales taxes, and competitors along with cash-strapped state governments have their eyes on those sales.
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Source: WSJ
