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Andrew Craig-Bennett provides readers with an overview of what tariffs mean for seaborne trades.
A problem with trying to write about the possible effects of tariffs on the merchant shipping business is that the people who want to stick tariffs on stuff keep changing their minds.
However, there are some broad statements – not quite Eternal Truths, but close – that we can make. The most important one, for us, is that manufacturers will move their production – and therefore the end points of their supply chains – to places which are exempt from tariffs imposed by their target markets.
That is what they did in the past, on a vast scale.
Consider the statement from the British government that they are not retaliating against American tariffs, “Because we hope to negotiate a trade agreement with the USA”. What they actually mean, but cannot say out loud, is “Because we hope to attract European manufacturing investment to the UK, which will be exempt from some of the U.S. tariffs, and thus to kick start our stagnant economy,”
You see how devious things become, as soon as tariffs enter the picture?
Thinking further along these lines, tax officials, already worried by transfer pricing, will have to consider that tariffs make transfer pricing more attractive than ever, and that far more effort will go into it… which means that the number of government staff needed to control it will increase…
Let’s make the reasonable assumption that the American people will not rise up against tyranny and “institute new Government”, as they claim to have done in 1776, so US tariffs, and counter tariffs imposed in response to them, become, if not indeed permanently established, at least “a thing” for the next four years, or eight years, or anyway beyond the time horizon of anyone thinking about a new ship .
If we are old enough, we started our working lives in the GATT world and then lived most of our lives in the WTO world. We none of us have experienced a world of tariffs and counter tariffs without a global tariff reduction organisation because that was the 1930s.
Tariffs don’t necessarily stop cargo movements; tariffs can change the routes and we can say with some confidence that the changes will add distance and add complexity, because in a WTO world cargo will take the most economical route from A to B, whereas in a tariff world the same cargo, which may not take the same form (it may be components rather than finished items) will move in such a way as to avoid a tariff. We can also say with confidence that any tariff imposed on anything will be more than any freight rate that we could dream of charging.
Now we must think about supply chains.
Obviously, supply chain managers will reconstruct their supply chains to minimise the impact of tariffs; they may have to do so at very short notice, and the container line salesperson who tries to insist on a pre-tariff contract when her or his customers are under extreme pressure is going to get remembered, and not in a good way.
This is starting to look a bit like a world in which cargo flows are thinner and longer; a world in which the medium sized longer haul ship is more useful than the largest ships, and in which transfer terminals are going to be very handy things to have.,
On the other hand, the Trumpery tariff against Chinese shipbuilding will encourage people to use the largest possible ships to call at US ports, so as to produce the lowest impact per stick of cargo. So ultramaxes, VLCCs, VLGCs and if only it were possible, (which it is not!) Valemaxes, to call at US ports.
Terminals with rail access to the USA – and we can all think of a couple, in Canada and in Mexico – might be suitable places to berth Chinese built ships…
And, of course, ships not built in China and not owned by owners who own ships built in China will not be subject to the penalty. How many of us sat down and worked out how to get round the Trumpery penalty, how long it would take and how much it would cost to do so? I certainly did and, gentle reader, I bet you did too. It is not hard, is it! One good law shipping law firm, a few phone calls, a spell of drafting, a signing, and away we go… think “the dark fleet” but in spades redoubled… on reflection, in No Trumps, redoubled.
Cargo will continue to flow, but some cargo will flow in different and more complex channels. The tonnages may go down a bit, but the ton mileages will go up.
What we need to think about, and plan for, is, “Where will the cargo come from and where will it go, over the next few years?”
This is a question of details, and details are not only where we find the Devil, they are where information disparities occur, and, to quote Tim Huxley, information disparities are where the shipowner (and his broker) make their money.
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