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Kuehne + Nagel - Apex chip smuggling investigation hits the wires

"The US government is investigating [Kuehne + Nagel's] Apex Logistics for its suspected role in smuggling Nvidia Corp. AI chips to China" - Bloomberg, 27 August 2026. (Timing sucks?) If you recall, Lawrence Lim wrote for Premium about Kuehne + Nagel's (K+N) 'deliberate path' to an Apex listing last month. When asked about Premium's exclusive (followed by Bloomberg coverage two days later), during the Q&A session of the call with management on Q2 26 numbers, CFO Markus Blanka-Graff replied to Barclays analyst Marco ...

Air China Cargo offers air cargo capacity through cargo.one

Air China Cargo has initiated its first global digital distribution partnership by placing its air cargo capacity on cargo.one for freight forwarders to book instantly. From 27 August, forwarders using cargo.one in Europe and North America can quote, book and track cargo, including express, up to 5000 kg on Air China Cargo services to destinations including Shanghai Pudong, Beijing, Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Chengdu, Chongqing and Hangzhou. Additional markets and capacity products will become available on cargo.one in the months that follow. The combination of cargo.one's multimodal rate selection and its AI workers helps forwarders to quote faster and more accurately, as well as optimise their win rates and scale their operations more efficiently, said the airfreight booking portal. Lei Wang, general manager of sales and marketing at Air China Cargo, commented: "Launching global digital sales on cargo.one is an important milestone in Air China Cargo's growth strategy and digitalization journey. "As an innovative and proven partner, cargo.one helps to extend our presence to thousands more relevant freight forwarders worldwide, and continually guarantees the seamless end-to-end experience our customers rightly expect." Moritz Claussen, founder and co-chief executive of cargo.one, added: "We are proud to be selected as the partner-of-choice by Air China Cargo. "As Air China Cargo's first global digital sales partner, we provide freight forwarders a valuable new gateway to its sought-after capacity to and from China, fully integrated within our AI-native operating system."

Singapore hits back at US claims of 'shadow transhipment'

Following US allegations that Singapore is part of a "shadow transhipment network" used by Chinese exporters to circumvent tariffs, its prime minister, Lawrence Wong (pictured), said it would be "unrealistic" to expect the city-state to determine the movement and origin of every consignment passing through its port. . At the National Day rally, Mr Wong hit back at the White House report naming Singapore among more than 40 countries allegedly involved in the "shadow" transhipment networks that enable Chinese exporters to disguise the origin of goods and evade US trade measures. As the world's largest transhipment hub, last year Singapore processed 44.66m teu of containers, of which 85% to 90% were transhipments and Mr Wong said Singapore enforced the rules and laws governing international trade. He said: "There are established rules of origin for international trade. You cannot just route goods through another country to disguise where they actually come from." However, the scale and complexity of global supply chains made it impossible to trace and verify the provenance of every product moving through the port, he added. "We're a major centre for re-exports and transhipment. Goods pass through Singapore from all over the world. We cannot possibly trace and verify the entire supply chain behind every product that passes through our shores." He added that Singapore would investigate and take action where there was evidence of wrongdoing, but cautioned that there were limits to what the country could achieve independently. "We must also be realistic about what Singapore can do on our own." The Trump administration has also turned its attention to forced labour in supply chains. Following the US Supreme Court's February ruling that the so-called Liberation Day tariffs were unlawful, the White House re-imposed tariffs on the grounds of alleged failures to prevent imports of goods produced using forced labour. A US review of 60 trading partners found 54 economies had failed to impose, and effectively enforce, prohibitions on imports linked to forced labour, and last month, Washington announced a 12.5% tariff on a range of Singaporean goods, citing the state's failure to prohibit imports produced with forced labour. Mr Wong said: "We all agree there should be no place for forced labour. This is a global problem. The better way to tackle it is through international cooperation and common standards - not tariffs. "But the US now expects countries to have domestic measures to stop imported goods made with forced labour. We will continue engaging the US and explaining our position."