U.S. vessel imports were up 3.7 percent from 2012, which totaled over 18.2 million TEUs (twenty-foot containers) brought into the United States last year. U.S. imports in 2013 started off at a slow start but ended with a surprising and unexpected surge from July through December. Annual TEUs haven't been this high since 2007, which is a good sign for a strong recession rebound in the U.S. trade industry. So far in 2014, the first three weeks of imports in January are already 5.2 percent higher than the same time last year.

Many companies are looking beyond China to less developed nations for sourcing, says Mark Michaels, chief commercial officer at Damco. Michaels discusses supply chain risks around the expansion into less developed areas and the pressure on providers to deliver service comparable to that in mature markets.

Chris Caplice, executive director of the MIT Center for Transportation and Logistics, discusses his research on identifying dominant designs in logistics and how these designs, in which companies are heavily invested, may be disrupted by emerging trends.