Price of container shipping has skyrocketed due to high demand and the supply of ships being fairly limited, even more limited when the average trip time of a boat increases.

One question I've been thinking about is whether the ocean freight companies will respond by increasing supply of ships. These ocean shipping companies didn't actually make a lot of money prior to the pandemic: back when China-USWest prices were under $3k a container, their margins were actually kind of thin.

So if we've had all this consolidation, and there are now three alliances that handle most of the freight, what is the incentive to increase supply? Just a 30% increase in ship capacity would likely crater profits.

Is the industry going to respond with building more ships, or, like OPEC, will they be able to coordinate to constrain supply so that long-term rates settle down in the $6-8k range versus the <$3k that existed previously?

If they are able to operate as a cartel, that will have major, long-term consequences for the dynamics of geographic manufacturing and supply chains. If they can't, then the pandemic will be a multi-year blip and we'll go back to hallowing out manufacturing and sending it to Asia.