So far, what we are seeing is essentially a lowering of freight rates for the routes to the US. If the past two months these same routes showed an increase of about 3,000 USD per day compared to the usual market, today, the trend changed again, getting close to a more regular market.
It is clear that, at the moment when Trump has launched the threat of sanctions and tariffs that ships owned by China (Chinese-built, Chinese flag, or just belonging to a company with Chinese interests) would have suffered in the event of an American ports call, the market reacted accordingly, increasing the price for cargoes with US destinations.
At that point, given the large number of Chinese tonnage present in the Atlantic, operators in order to avoid fees up to one million dollars, first began to pay more so as to insure ships without any connection to the Republic of China, and in the second place they tried to contract the above-mentioned “USTR clauses”, attributing to the shipowners all possible penal costs. Clearly, virtually no shipowners have ever accepted.
The market for this route, as anticipated, has risen by a few thousand dollars per day, and operators have even stopped pricing forward shipments to the USA with the fear of finding difficulties one day in finding ships for that destination.
Today, following Trump’s statements on this subject and the postponement of these possible tariffs, a “usual” market level is being restored. At least for the second half of Q2 and Q3, the fears of the operators seem to have disappeared, while more uncertainties remain for Q4, where we will see the next moves of the American president.
In this regard, we can remember how Supramaxes and Ultramaxes fixed at around 12,000 USD per day for cement shipments to the States, at the time of the very peak of fear (March-April), while now the same cargoes are fixing at around 8-9000 USD per day.
