Shipping giant Maersk, seen as a barometer of global trade, does not see signs of a U.S. recession as freight demand remains strong, its chief executive said on Wednesday.

“We’ve actually seen over the last few years that the container market has been incredibly resilient in the face of all the recession fears,” Vincent Clerc told CNBC’s “Squawk Box Europe” on Wednesday, adding that container demand is often a good indicator of underlying macroeconomic strength.

Klecker said U.S. inventories -- goods stored before being delivered or processed -- are "higher than at the beginning of the year, but not yet at worrisome levels or indicative of an imminent meaningful slowdown," though he noted some unpredictability in how much companies will restock.

We are also looking at the purchase orders of many retailers and consumer brands that need to import into the U.S. to meet demand over the next month, and that seems to be still pretty strong... At least the current data and indicators seem to indicate that people still have some confidence in the current level of consumption in the U.S..”

Fears that the world's largest economy is heading for a recession suddenly escalated last week after a string of weaker-than-expected jobs data divided economists and market participants.

The latest data released by the U.S. Census Bureau showed that U.S. retail trade inventories (a measure of idle inventory) increased 5.33% to $793.86 billion in May from a year earlier.

Leasing platform Container xChange said in a report released on Wednesday that indicators show that inventory is higher than demand, which means that the coming months will be a less "prosperous period" for container traders, logistics markets and retailers who stock up.

Clerk said Maersk had been surprised by the resilience of container freight volumes over the past few years and said it expected this to continue in the coming quarters, with no signs that the global economy was heading towards recession territory.

He went on to say that Chinese exports have been the engine behind the strength in container freight volumes, and the share of global containers originating from or destined for China has also been increasing.

By contrast, the Danish company's outlook was significantly bleaker for 2022, when it warned that inflation, the threat of a global recession, Europe's energy crisis and the Russia-Ukraine conflict would weigh on demand.

The combined effect of these factors has led to a decline in freight rates in 2023, causing Maersk's profits to fall sharply.

But that trend has been partially reversed this year as a surge in geopolitical tensions in the Red Sea region led shipping companies to reroute trade around the southern coast of Africa, lengthening voyage times and reducing global capacity.

Clerk told CNBC on Wednesday that he expects transshipments triggered by the situation in the Red Sea to continue at least until the end of the year.

“Of course, that requires more capacity, more ships to move global trade around the world, and that has created some shortages in the second and third quarter, which we are currently dealing with,” said Clerk. He added that it also means that shipping costs will be higher in the short term, so we have to bear considerable costs, both in terms of more ships and more containers to do the work we expect.

He went on to say that if this situation persists, Maersk will see “significant inflation” in its base costs, which it will need to pass on to its customers, with routes from Asia to Europe or the U.S. East Coast costing 20% ​​to 30% more.

Capacity restrictions have had a positive impact on the Danish shipping giant’s margins in the short term and have prompted it to raise profits three times in recent months.

Maersk reported on Wednesday that underlying profit fell to $623 million in the second quarter compared with the same period last year, while revenue fell to $12.77 billion from $12.99 billion.

The company said that despite the lower annual margins, ocean freight margins were “significantly better” in the first quarter of 2024 and the fourth quarter of 2023, with an EBIT margin of 5.6%, compared with -2% and -12.8% in the previous two periods, respectively.

Article forwarded from: Jinshi Data