The short story of Lebanon’s vital trade of 2020 has three chapters but no resolution at the end. The tragic and dramatic lead character of the story is the Beirut port, which is revealed throughout the year as, in a succinct synopsis of this ballad, the open secret and potential epitaph of the Lebanese economy in its overwhelming dependence on external trade. In the story’s first chapter, external trade was hit by the worst economic headwinds that stakeholders in Lebanon’s trade have experienced in years, due to severely restricted imports and port activity. The second chapter of the story starts out bloody and brutal, opening with one port warehouse’s gigantic explosion on August 4. The immediate fallout of this unimaginable catastrophe was a perfect storm of an elite-induced humanitarian and economic emergency, and the people’s justly outraged response; a cataclysm that has swept away a – by that time already
