China’s retaliatory tariffs on some American goods came into effect on Monday, while Donald Trump, the American president, vowed yesterday to impose a 25% tariff on all steel and aluminium imports into the US, with a full announcement to come today.
“Any steel coming into the United States is going to have a 25% tariff,” Trump said yesterday.
In the opening three weeks of Trump’s return to the White House, the president has announced many tariffs, much of which have since been rescinded or postponed.
“For the shipping and supply chain sector we are at a point where any such statements should be taken with some scepticism – at least in terms of deciding to suddenly change supply chains and sourcing patterns. As the developments over the past week has shown then not only statements related to tariffs but also actual executive orders are prone to rapid changes and postponements,” Lars Jensen, who heads up container shipping consultancy Vespucci Maritime, commented in a recent social media posting.
“It is hard to assess the impact of tariffs on shipping and trade given their traffic light nature: green, amber, red, repeat, broken,” commented broker Hartland Shipping in a weekly report.
China’s latest tariffs on US goods include a 15% border tax on imports of US coal and liquefied natural gas products. There is also a 10% tariff on American crude oil, agricultural machinery and large-engine cars. Beijing’s action is in response to a blanket 10% tariff Trump has levied on all Chinese imports.
In a complaint lodged with the World Trade Organization (WTO), China said the US import taxes were “discriminatory and protectionist” and violated trade rules.
The trade war between the world’s two largest economies to date has not had a huge effect on global seaborne volumes.
According to Clarksons Research, the US tariffs on China affect 67m tonnes per annum of trade based on 2024 volumes, while China’s response affects a further 23m tonnes per annum, taking total freshly tariffed trade to around 0.7% of global seaborne trade in tonnes and 1.4% in tonne-miles.
“Based on these fresh US and Chinese polices, direct impacts on bulkers (coal), tankers (crude) and LNG are limited (less than ~1% of global trade ‘tariffed’ for each),” Clarksons noted in its most recent weekly report.
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