The closure wasn't particularly damaging to the global economy. It did increase shipping costs, but even with increased costs, shipping by sea was still a cheap form of transport. The increased cost was spread over many, many tons of goods, and passed onto the consumer. In 1967, 15% of the world's shipping passed through the Suez canal, so 85% of shipping was completely unaffected. The most important item passing through the Suez canal was oil. The longer journey around the Cape of Good Hope effectively reduced total tanker capacity, but the short-term response of converting bulk dry carriers to tankers made up for this; 200 more tankers had restored effective capacity to its former level within a few weeks. A longer term response was the development of supertankers, which reduced the cost of shipping via the long route around Africa to less per ton than with a smaller tanker sailing through the Suez canal.

There were other responses too. Countries whose separations in terms of sea miles was increased greatly by the closure traded less with each other, and more with other, closer, countries. The UK was less affected than by the 1956 6 month closure; in 1956, 60% of good to the UK passed through the canal, which had reduced to 25% by 1965 (a big factor was oil from Libya and West Africa which didn't need to pass through the canal to reach the UK).

It did hurt the Egyptian economy. Tolls from the canal totalled about 2% of Egypt's GDP, and were a valuable source of foreign exchange. Much canal-related employment was lost. When the canal was re-opened in 1975, it had lost much of its significant for oil shipping - the new supertankers were too large for the canal, and the re-opened canal only carried about 7.5% of the world's shipping, compared with its pre-closure 15%.

Re-opening the canal was straightforward - it consisted of removing the ships which had been sunk at both ends by the Egyptians to block the canal, and clearing mines which had been laid in the canal. The 15 ships which had been trapped in the canal by the closure (the "Yellow Fleet") were finally free to return home. Of these, 2 were able to get home under their own power, both of the trapped German ships, Nordwind and Münsterland. Münsterland's cargo of eggs and fruit would have been worthless long before, but perhaps Nordwind's cargo of 8-year-old T-shirts still had value.