The cost of moving pretty much every dry-bulk commodity — from fertilizer to salt to rocks — has surged since July, lifting the London-based Baltic Exchange’s main freight gauge to its highest in almost four years.

It’s getting more expensive to transport commodities around the world, threatening to squeeze profits for global traders and raise food prices.

A shopping spree by two billionaires is shaking up a shipping industry still recovering from years of falling rates and overcapacity.

President Donald Trump ordered the Jones Act to be waived for shipments to hurricane-ravaged Puerto Rico immediately at the request of Governor Ricardo Rossello, White House press secretary Sarah Sanders said Sept. 28.

When an established maritime company announced tentative plans last month to start a new domestic shipping line in 2020 to serve Hawaii, it said such service would provide “market stability.” But another possible result is a cargo capacity glut.

Frank Marino sat in a repurposed U.S. Coast Guard boat bobbing in Boston Harbor one morning late last month. He pointed the boat straight at a buoy several hundred yards away, while his colleague Mohamed Saad Ibn Seddik used a laptop to set the vehicle on a course that would run right into it.

Global package shipping volume increased by 48% during the past two years, powered by growth in e-commerce, according to a report released last week by technology company Pitney Bowes.

A.P. Moller-Maersk A/S said a cyberattack that hit the owner of the world’s biggest container shipping company at the end of June will wipe as much as $300 million off profits in the third quarter.

Yangzijiang Shipbuilding Holdings Ltd., which specializes in dry-bulk carriers, has rallied 83% in 2017 to lead the benchmark Straits Times Index. The Chinese shipbuilding firm has made a comeback after it won 13 contracts worth $318 million in the first quarter, about 40% of its $823 million worth of orders it won last year.