Avast, ye ink-stained wretches and bilge-rats! Pull up a crate of sour citrus and lend an ear, for the ledger-men at ING Think have cast their bones, and the omen be as dark as a kraken’s ink-sac. We look toward the horizon of 2026, and what do we see? Not the roaring gales of profit we were promised, but a doldrum so thick it’d make a ghost ship weep. Global Trade is hitting the reef, mates, and the velocity of our merchant fleets is slowing to a crawl that’d shame a barnacle-encrusted turtle. The winds that once carried silk and spice across the seven seas have turned into a stagnant breeze, barely enough to ruffle a captain’s beard.

Old Quartermaster Quid barked at me over a flask of fermented grog this morning, saying, 'Captain, the winds of the East be failing, and the harbors of the West are bolting their gates!' He ain't wrong, the salty dog. The scribes say we’re looking at a massive shift in how goods move across the briny deep. Instead of the grand, sprawling voyages across the vast blue, we’re seeing the rise of near-shoring—a fancy term for keeping your plunder in your own backyard where you can keep an eye on it. It seems the lords of industry are scared of the very Supply Chains they spent decades weaving, and now they’d rather trade with their cousins than the world at large.

'The map is shrinking,' lamented Lord Bullion, a man whose powdered wig is as stiff as his trade tariffs. 'We no longer trust the distant currents. We’d rather trade with a neighbor we hate than a stranger we don’t know.' This regionalism is a dagger to the heart of a free-roaming privateer. If the trade stays in the shallow waters of North America or the tight inlets of the Mediterranean, there’s less room for a brave soul to intercept a rich prize in the open sea. It’s a protectionist fog, thick enough to blind a lookout, and it’s settling over every port from London to Singapore, turning the ocean into a series of walled ponds.

The consequences be dire for those of us who live by the flow of the world’s bounty. When The World Economy shudders, it’s the sailors who feel the spray first. Expect fewer crates of fine porcelain, fewer barrels of rare tobacco, and more cannons pointed at anyone trying to cross an invisible line in the water. The growth we saw in the years past be a fading sunset. We’re entering an era of friction, where every chest of gold is taxed, tracked, and trapped by geopolitical squabbles that make a tavern brawl look like a Sunday school picnic. The giants are arguing, and they’re smashing the merchant boats just to prove a point.

So, sharpen your cutlasses and tighten your belts, ye scallywags. The year 2026 won't be a year of discovery or expansion; it’ll be a year of hunkering down and guarding what little we’ve got left. The great engine of the world is grinding its gears, and the screeching sound ye hear isn't the gulls—it’s the sound of the global marketplace slamming its shutters. Steady as she goes, for the waters ahead be shallow and full of sharks wearing pinstriped suits. If there’s no loot moving, there’s no life for the likes of us, and the horizon looks emptier than a keg at dawn.