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Sources told LNG Prime on Thursday that the change in order to LNG fuel includes eight methanol dual-fuel ready vessels with a capacity of 16,000 TEU.

Four of these ships will be built by Samsung Heavy and four by HD Hyundai Samho.

Last month, LNG Prime was the first to report, citing sources, that Wan Hai Lines was considering switching this order to LNG fuel.

These will be the first LNG dual-fuel containerships in Wan Hai’s fleet.

The sources said that Wan Hai is expected to pay more than $30 million more per vessel for the LNG fuel switch.

Powered by MAN ME-GA engines, the vessel’s LNG tanks will be equipped with GTT’s Mark III Flex containment tech, according to the sources.

The vessels are expected to be delivered in 2027.

In October 2024, Wan Hai Lines announced orders for eight methanol dual-fuel ready vessels with a capacity of 16,000 teu.

Wan Hai said at the time that the Samsung Heavy vessels were each priced from $187 million to $204 million, or $750.5 million to $816 million for the entire order.

On the other hand, the Hyundai Samho vessels were each priced from $186.4 million to $204 million, or $745.9 million to $816 million for the entire order.

Orders for LNG-powered vessels jumped 103 percent to 264 ships last year, driven by the container and car carrier newbuild boom over the last three years, according to classification society DNV.

In 2024, 69 percent of all containership orders were for ships capable of being powered by alternative fuels, driven by cargo owners responding to consumer demands for more sustainable practices and liner companies preparing to replace older tonnage, DNV said.

Source: Lngprime.com

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California’s SB 222, which would have allowed lawsuits against oil and gas companies over natural disasters, officially died in committee.

​California legislation that would have permitted the state FAIR plan, individuals, and insurers to sue oil and gas companies over natural disasters officially failed to advance last evening in the California Senate Judiciary Committee. [emphasis, links added]

SB 222, which was sponsored by San Francisco State Sen. Scott Wiener and the Rockefeller-backed Center for Climate Integrity, only notched 5 of the 7 committee votes needed to proceed amid stiff bipartisan opposition.

The legislation has been a flashpoint in the ongoing California homeowners insurance debate as climate lawfare activists looked to capitalize on the recent string of devastating wildfires across the state.

Democrats Vote Against SB 222 Due to Cost and Feasibility Concerns

Sen. Angelique Ashby and Sen. Anna Caballero, both Democrats, voted against the bill outright while fellow Democrats Chairman Tom Umberg and Sen. Maria Durazo abstained, arguing they were unconvinced the legislation would help stabilize California’s soaring home insurance premiums.

In a statement to the Associated Press before the hearing, Sen. Caballero pointed out that she supports strong environmental policy – but argued that SB 222 does not hit the mark:

“If this was going to actually result in building homes in the fire zones faster, better and with more efficiency, I would probably support it… But from my view, this is more about lawyers. This is about litigation.”

During the hearing, the Central Valley Democrat and former trial attorney echoed her earlier comments that the legislation was “more about lawyers” than meaningful climate action, warning that it could lead to extended litigation while doing little to address California’s housing or insurance affordability crises:

“What looks like a simple solution is not always a simple solution. I want us to create opportunities for the workers who are here today to continue working, to be able to earn livable wages, and for us to solve our climate issues in a way that includes carbon capture, hydrogen, and biogas. […]

“These are the kinds of jobs that will create livable wages and help us reach our climate goals. I think we’re all trying to reach the same goal. I just don’t think we’re going to get there through this litigation.” [Emphasis Added]

Sen. Ashby, a former attorney representing Sacramento, also opposed the measure. Sen. Ashby cautioned that the bill would “absolutely drive up the cost of gas” and questioned whether relying on private litigation was an effective tool:

“And I think in the end, this bill—at least for me—is too much about a private right of action and a litigation strategy. It’s too much money spent on lawyers and courts and not enough on people. I know it’s intended to be a form of accountability, and we’re sitting in the Judiciary Committee. I went to law school. I get it. That’s what the legal system is supposed to do—accountability.

“But sometimes that mechanism of accountability can get turned upside down. It costs so much that it becomes part of the problem. I truly believe this bill would drive us to that space.” [Emphasis Added]

Several labor unions also played a crucial role in opposing SB 222.

A wide swath of construction and industry union representatives spoke out against the bill, including the Boilermakers, Ironworkers, and the California State Council of Laborers.

Keith Dunn of the State Building and Construction Trades Council warned the bill could cost jobs and destabilize industries already navigating California’s complex regulatory climate:

“When aspirational legislation such as SB 222 is confronted with economic reality, it does nothing but increase the cost for the very people you claim to protect. For the men and women of the building trades, the increased costs of SB 222 will result in lost jobs and economic instability.”

Rockefeller Activists Lash Out At Democrats Following Bill’s Failure

While SB 222 could technically be brought back up for consideration, its prospects appear dim.

The Rockefeller-backed Center for Climate Integrity, one of the primary sponsors of the bill, lashed out at Democratic members of the Judiciary Committee on the social media platform Bluesky after the bill failed to advance.

California could have set a nationwide example for how to make Big Oil pay for its role in the insurance crisis and help protect residents from an uninsurable future.

Instead, some lawmakers decided to shield Big Oil from accountability and deprive citizens of tools to recover devastating losses.

[image or embed]

— Center for Climate Integrity (@climateintegrity.bsky.social) April 9, 2025 at 10:03 AM

California Environmental Voters, a political group partnering with CCI to promote the legislation, condemned Democratic abstentions as betrayals, despite the experienced legislators’ concerns about affordability and the legal structure of the bill.

The bill’s failure is the latest in a string of stinging defeats for climate lawfare activists, as frivolous Rockefeller-backed climate lawsuits have been dismissed in various jurisdictions across the country in recent months.

Read rest at EID Climate

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Worst food inflation since 2022. Worst housing inflation in months. But plunging prices for lodging, rental cars, and airfares are interesting.

By Wolf Richter for WOLF STREET.

In the Consumer Price Index today, month-to-month inflation accelerated further for housing, food, medical care services, and motor vehicle maintenance and repair, showing the worst increases in many months, and in the case of food, in years.

But these price increases were overpowered by plunging gasoline prices, and by plunging prices in the travel sector – month-to-month not annualized: lodging away from home (-3.5%), airline fares (-5.3%), and rental cars (-2.7%). These are huge month-to-month drops, annualized between -28% and -48%.

In addition, prices dropped month-to-month not annualized for motor vehicle insurance (-0.8%), used vehicles (-0.7%), and sporting goods (-0.6%). All seasonally adjusted.

As a result, overall CPI turned negative month-to-month, while core CPI and core services CPI decelerated sharply. Durable goods inflation accelerated a tiny bit month-to-month, and has been positive for the third months in a row, but year-over-year remained negative.

The overall Consumer Price Index fell by 0.05% (-0.6% annualized) in March from February (blue in the chart below).

This drop caused the 6-month CPI to decelerate for the first time in months to +3.1% annualized (red in the chart):

The “Core” CPI, which excludes food and energy components to track underlying inflation, inched up by 0.06% (+0.68% annualized) in March from February, a sharp deceleration (blue in the chart below).

The 6-month “core” CPI rose by 3.0% annualized, the second deceleration in a row (red).

The major components, year-over-year:

• Overall CPI: +239% (yellow), deceleration from +2.82% in February.
• Core CPI +2.79% (red), deceleration from +3.12% in February.
• Core Services CPI: +3.68% (blue), a sharp deceleration from +4.12% in February, largely driven by the plunge in travel-related services, and by the drop in motor vehicle insurance, overpowering the acceleration of housing costs and medical care insurance.
• Durable goods CPI: -1.0% (green), the smallest year-over-year decline since June 2023.

“Core services” CPI.

Core services CPI inched up by 0.11% in March from February (+1.3% annualized, a sharp deceleration from prior months.

Core services include all services except energy services and accounts for about two-thirds of the overall CPI.

Inflation in the biggies in core services continued to accelerate on a month-to-month basis, including the housing components and medical care services.

But the massive plunge in prices of travel-related services and the drop in auto insurance pushed the core services CPI down.

The 6-month core services CPI rose by 3.5% annualized, a sharp deceleration from February (red).

Housing components of core services.

Owners’ Equivalent of Rent CPI jumped by 4.9% annualized (+0.40% not annualized) in March from February, the worst increase since October.

The three-month average, which shows the recent trend, accelerated to +4.1% annualized, the worst increase since November.

OER indirectly reflects the expenses of homeownership: homeowners’ insurance, HOA fees, property taxes, and maintenance. It’s the only measure for those expenses in the CPI. It is based on what a large group of homeowners estimates their home would rent for, with the assumption that a homeowner would want to recoup their cost increases by raising the rent.

As a stand-in for homeowners’ insurance, HOA fees, property taxes, and maintenance costs, OER accounts for 26.1% of overall CPI and estimates inflation of shelter as a service for homeowners.

Rent of Primary Residence CPI accelerated to +4.1% annualized in March from February.

The 3-month rate accelerated to +3.9% annualized, the worst increase since September, and the fifth month in a row of acceleration.

Rent CPI accounts for 7.5% of overall CPI. It is based on rents that tenants actually paid, not on asking rents of advertised vacant units for rent. The survey follows the same large group of rental houses and apartments over time and tracks the rents that the current tenants, who come and go, pay in rent for these units.

Year-over-year, rent CPI (blue in the chart below) rose by 4.0%, a slight deceleration from the prior month (+4.1%). And OER rose by 4.4%, roughly the same as in the prior month (red). The year-over-year declines are now flattening out.

Rent inflation vs. home-price inflation: The red line in the chart below represents the CPI for Rent of Primary Residence as index value. The purple line represents Zillow’s “raw” Home Value Index for the US through February. Both indexes are set to 100 for January 2000. But home-price changes vary by metro and range from steep declines to continued increases, see the 33 Most Splendid Housing Bubbles in America.

The CPI for motor-vehicle maintenance & repair jumped by 10.6% annualized in March from February, the worst month-to-month increase since October. Year-over-year, the index rose by 4.8%.

Since January 2020, the index has surged by 41%. This chart shows the price level, not the year-over-year percentage change:

The CPI for motor vehicle insurance fell by 8.7% annualized in March from February. This drop cooled the year-over-year increase to +7.5%, the smallest increase since July 2022.

Since January 2022, motor vehicle insurance prices have exploded by 55%, fueled by the surge repair costs and the historic spike in used vehicle prices (replacement costs for insurers) in 2021 and 2022.

Food away from Home CPI rose by 4.5% annualized in March from February. Year over year, the index accelerated to +3.8%, worst increase since October.

These food services include full-service and limited-service meals and snacks served away from home in restaurants, cafeterias, at stalls, etc.

The table below shows the major categories of “core services.” Combined, they accounted for 64% of total CPI:

Major Services ex. Energy Services	Weight in CPI	MoM	YoY
Core Services	64%	0.3%	4.8%
Owner’s equivalent of rent	26.2%	0.4%	4.4%
Rent of primary residence	7.5%	0.3%	4.0%
Medical care services & insurance	6.7%	0.5%	3.0%
Food services (food away from home)	5.6%	0.4%	3.8%
Motor vehicle insurance	2.8%	-0.8%	7.5%
Education (tuition, childcare, school fees)	2.5%	0.4%	3.7%
Admission, movies, concerts, sports events, club memberships	2.1%	0.5%	5.6%
Other personal services (dry-cleaning, haircuts, legal services…)	1.6%	1.6%	4.7%
Public transportation (airline fares, etc.)	1.5%	-4.2%	-3.5%
Telephone & wireless services	1.5%	-0.1%	0.1%
Lodging away from home, incl Hotels, motels	1.3%	-3.5%	-2.5%
Water, sewer, trash collection services	1.1%	0.2%	4.9%
Motor vehicle maintenance & repair	1.0%	0.8%	4.8%
Internet services	0.9%	0.3%	-1.1%
Video and audio services, cable, streaming	0.8%	-0.7%	2.0%
Pet services, including veterinary	0.5%	-0.2%	4.7%
Tenants’ & Household insurance	0.4%	-0.3%	2.2%
Car and truck rental	0.1%	-2.7%	-8.7%
Postage & delivery services	0.1%	0.4%	2.9%

Prices of Goods.

The used vehicle CPI: March was the beginning of tax refund season when used-vehicle prices normally jump. But this March they rose only slightly from February: +0.21% (+3.8% annualized), not seasonally adjusted.

So seasonally adjusted, the index fell by 0.69% (-7.9% annualized) month-to-month.

Year-over-year, used vehicle prices rose by 0.6%, the third month in a row of year-over-year increases. The historic plunge of used vehicle prices from early 2022 through August 2024 was one of the factors in the cooling of CPI inflation over that period.

New vehicles CPI edged up month-to-month by 0.1% (+1.2% annualized), seasonally adjusted. Year-over-year, the index also edged up by 0.1%.

Since early 2023, new vehicle prices have been sticky, unlike used-vehicle prices. In Q1, new vehicle unit sales increased solidly, powered by a big increase in March, on top of decent growth in January and February, producing the best Q1 since 2019 [read: Our Drunken Sailors Are Back], after already strong sales growth in Q4. This increase in demand over the past six months may have been why prices haven’t eased.

Durable Goods overall – dominated by new and used vehicles – experienced price declines (deflation) across the board from mid-2022 through August 2024, after the huge price spikes during the pandemic. But starting in September 2024, prices of durable goods have started to edge higher unevenly:

Major durable goods categories	MoM	YoY
Durable goods overall	0.0%	-1.0%
New vehicles	0.1%	0.0%
Used vehicles	-0.7%	0.6%
Household furnishings (furniture, appliances, floor coverings, tools)	0.0%	-0.3%
Sporting goods (bicycles, equipment, etc.)	-0.6%	-5.0%
Information technology (computers, smartphones, etc.)	0.4%	-7.4%

Food Inflation.

The CPI for “Food at home” jumped by 0.5% month-to-month (+6.0% annualized), the worst increase since October 2022, with big increases in many categories, particularly eggs (due to the avian flu), beef, pork, poultry, dairy, juices, and baby food.

Year-over-year, the index rose by 2.4%, the worst increase since August 2023. Since January 2020, food prices have surged by 28%. This is food purchased at stores and markets to be eaten off premises.

MoM	YoY
Food at home	0.5%	2.4%
Cereals, breads, bakery products	-0.1%	1.1%
Beef and veal	1.2%	8.6%
Pork	1.7%	2.9%
Poultry	0.9%	0.9%
Fish and seafood	-1.5%	0.2%
Eggs	5.9%	60.4%
Dairy and related products	1.0%	2.2%
Fresh fruits	-0.4%	1.2%
Fresh vegetables	-1.0%	-3.0%
Juices and nonalcoholic drinks	0.7%	1.6%
Coffee, tea, etc.	0.4%	4.5%
Fats and oils	0.5%	1.1%
Baby food & formula	0.6%	0.0%
Alcoholic beverages at home	0.3%	0.9%

Apparel and footwear.

The CPI for apparel and footwear rose by 0.4% (not annualized), and year-over-year by 0.3%.

Energy.

The CPI for gasoline, not seasonally adjusted, fell in March from February, which was unusual because gasoline prices generally rise in March. So the seasonally adjusted index plunged by 6.3% (not annualized).

Year-over-year, the gasoline index plunged by 9.8%, to the lowest price level since September 2021. The driver here is the continued plunge in oil prices. Gasoline makes up about half of the overall energy CPI.

The CPI for energy plunged month-to-month by 2.4% (not annualized), driven by the plunge in gasoline prices. But prices for electricity and natural gas piped to the home jumped.

CPI for Energy, by Category	MoM	YoY
Overall Energy CPI	-2.4%	-3.3%
Gasoline	-6.3%	-9.8%
Electricity service	0.9%	2.8%
Utility natural gas to home	3.6%	9.4%
Heating oil, propane, kerosene, firewood	-3.0%	-3.3%

Source: Wolfstreet.com

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ENB Pub Note: I have enjoyed my conversations with Tom Nelson, and he is spot on. We recommend you follow him. The problem with the climate scam as Tom calls it, is that the left political leaders make painful energy policies and regulations based upon fictitious data and reasons. Physics and fiscal responsibility are required when dealing with the Grid. 

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The climate scam is dying, even if the cult won’t admit their narrative is crumbling. Here are just the latest signs of its implosion.

​The following article is by Tom Nelson, cofounder of Gorilla Science and a producer for the hit movie, “Climate: The Movie”. To garner a wider audience, he graciously permitted to have it published here. –CCD Editor

The climate scam is imploding right now. Of course, there are still plenty of remaining pockets of climate cultism, but the whole movement is crumbling. [some links added]

It’s the most massive scientific fraud in human history, and it will take significant time to completely die, but make no mistake: It IS dying.

In no particular order, here are some updates on the climate scam’s implosion:

1. “Huge: A powerful climate alliance of the World Economic Forum, major companies, the UN, and banks is at an end“.
2. “Bill Gates is giving up on climate change… Breakthrough Energy, a joint venture between Bill Gates and a handful of other billionaires… is slashing much of its policy staff.”
3. NASA GISS funding “terminated”: “New NASA Chief Will Wind Down Climate Alarm Shop“.
4. Delicious straight talk from U.S. EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin: “we are driving a dagger through the heart of climate-change religion“.
5. Wonderful straight talk from U.S. Energy Secretary Chris Wright: “𝑁𝑒𝑡 𝑧𝑒𝑟𝑜 𝑏𝑦 2050 𝑖𝑠 𝑗𝑢𝑠𝑡 𝑛𝑜𝑛𝑠𝑒𝑛𝑠𝑒.” He suggests climate change alarmism is “a quasi-cult religion“.
6. The Tories have ditched Net Zero by 2050.
7. Remarkably, Just Stop Oil just announced “the end of soup on Van Goghs, cornstarch on Stonehenge and slow marching in the streets“.
8. Shellenberger/Pielke Jr: “Climate change is going to fade from view like overpopulation did…Lack of protests over Trump’s action on energy shows how little anyone ever really cared about global warming“.
9. One of the longest-running climate cases, Juliana v. United States, just ended in rejection at the Supreme Court.
10. A climate startup that boasted a roster of celebrity backers and arranged carbon credits for Meta, Microsoft, and other large companies just filed for bankruptcy.
11. Blackrock chief Larry Fink mentioned “climate” a total of 29 times in his 2020 letter to CEOs, then ZERO times in his 2025 letter!
    
12. Michael Mann is now losing in court to Mark Steyn.
13. SEC Votes to End Defense of Climate Disclosure Rules.
14. New Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard
    failed to even mention “climate change” as a national security threat.
15. The warmist International Energy Agency just remembered that we need hydrocarbon fuels.
16. Greenpeace was just hit with a $667 million judgment.
17. Britain’s banks are quietly distancing themselves from Net Zero commitments.
18. Warmist Sabine Hossenfelder laments that “Everyone is Giving Up On Climate Goals…global businesses are done pretending they care about carbon neutrality.”
19. New Jersey’s massive lawsuit accusing the oil industry of causing climate change was dismissed with prejudice.
20. Google is No Longer Claiming to Be Carbon Neutral.
21. The left “went from wanting EV mandates to now burning those same EVs in the blink of a cultural eye”.
22. Indonesia casts doubt on Paris climate accord after Donald Trump’s exit.
    
23. Australian pension funds are backing away from climate pledges too.
24. A Davos speaker specifically lists *climate* first as a cause that is “simply being gradually kind of marginalised“!
25. EU exploring weaker 2040 climate goal.
26. Bloomberg: “Years of Climate Action Demolished in Days“.
27. After lots of episodes guffawing at climate realists, The Climate Denier’s Playbook podcast went dark without explanation in Oct. 2024.
28. Facing increasing pushback, many warmist scientists have fled from X. NASA’s Gavin Schmidt is one example.
29. In recent months, lots of companies have been abandoning climate goals. Air New Zealand is one example.
30. Greta Thunberg’s last X “school strike” post was in Oct. 2024. The Fridays for Future social media feed hasn’t been updated for almost three years.
31. Last year, Climate Nexus, a warmist organization that pushed climate hysteria for over a decade and had tens of employees, suddenly threw in the towel.
32. Just over a year ago, The Daily Kos ClimateDenierRoundup page, which spewed climate scam propaganda incessantly (2,200 posts!) for many years, abruptly stopped posting.
33. Joe Rogan, with his huge audience, was a full-on warmist in 2018 but now routinely scoffs at the climate scam.

We have come a long way since Nancy Pelosi and Newt Gingrich sat down to endorse Al Gore’s climate scam in 2008!

After discovering so many massive, high-profile COVID lies in recent years, large numbers of people are asking themselves, “What else are they lying about?”, and the answer is “just about everything”.

Elites tried for the Great Reset, but they got a Great Awakening.

Originally posted on X. Please share to additional social media.

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Trump’s NASA pick Jared Isaacman may cut NASA GISS funding, shifting its focus back to space exploration and not overcooked climate models.

​Claiming no privileged information, this writer is enormously optimistic that incoming Trump pick to head NASA, Jared Isaacman [pictured above], will terminate funding of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) in concert with DOGE waste-cutting, space program redirection, and pro-drilling energy priorities. [emphasis, links added]

The Wall Street Journal purports to have a clearer inside picture “based upon interviews with nearly three dozen people close to Elon Musk, the Trump administration, NASA, lawmakers andSpaceX,” one which comports with my prediction that a shifted critical path emphasis to ambitious human Mars programs will redirect vital funding away from readily expendable climate research and related green energy agendas.

According to the Journal, President Trump announced the appointment soon after Musk reached out to Isaacman, the payments entrepreneur who has flown to orbit with SpaceX and invested in the company, asking if he would take the job.

All three, Trump, Musk, and Isaacman, share independently wealthy billionaire backgrounds and uncommonly far-forward-looking societal goals.

During his joint Congress inauguration speech, Trump said that he would launch Americans to “plant the Stars and Stripes on the planet Mars.”

Musk said in a mid-March Fox News interview, “We are going to be able to take astronauts to Mars and ultimately build a self-sustaining civilization on Mars. That is the long-term goal of the company: make life multi-planetary.”

Isaacman, the founder of Shift4, a payment-processing company that partly funded the SpaceX “Polaris Dawn” suborbital mission and flew aboard as a crew member, told the Wall Street Journal in 2021, “You have to go past where we’re comfortable.”

After Trump announced his nomination to lead NASA on an X post, he said, “I can confidently say this second space age has only just begun.”

Dialing back to NASA GISS, it’s difficult to imagine that any of the three dedicated space exploration action figures will wish to continue to divert any more of the agency’s annual $25 billion budget to support climate alarmism by an ugly poster child for DOGE waste spending reform.

Some will recall that NASA GISS, a small climate modeling shop located in a Manhattan office building, was originally used to give unwarranted credibility to a claimed human-caused global warming crisis from the beginning.

Former GISS Director James Hansen first gained worldwide attention in 1988 following his star witness testimony before then-Senator Al Gore’s Committee on Science, Technology andSpace when he stated with 99% certainty that temperatures had, in fact, increased and that there had been some greenhouse warming, although he then made no direct connection between the two.

This observation was consistent with concerns about a particularly warm summer that year in some U.S. regions.

Over time, Hansen’s pronouncements became ever more dramatic.

In a Dec. 6, 2005, presentation to the American Geophysical Union, he stated that the Earth’s climate was already reaching a tipping point that will result in the loss of Arctic ice as we know it, with sea levels rising as much as 80 feet during this century, thus flooding coastal areas.

He warned that this could be halted only if greenhouse gas emissions were reduced within the next 25 years.

Hansen was subsequently arrested three times in climate protests while holding that NASA position, yet he was never fired.

In 2011, Seven Apollo astronauts, along with two former NASA Johnson Space Center directors and several former senior management-level technical experts, lodged formal complaints to NASA Administrator Charles Bolden, Jr. regarding the dismal and embarrassing state of the agency’s climate science programs.

An April 10 letter admonished the agency for its role in advocating a high degree of certainty that man-made CO2 is a major cause of climate change while neglecting basic empirical evidence that called the theory into question.

The group also charged that NASA in general, and GISS in particular, had failed to make an objective assessment of all available scientific data on climate change and was relying too heavily upon complex climate models that have proven to be scientifically inadequate for climate predictions.

It specifically asked that GISS, headed by Hansen, be required to “refrain from including unproven remarks in public releases and websites.”

As Gavin Schmidt who succeeded Hansen as GISS director told the renowned journal Science in 2021, “It’s become clear over the last year or so that we can’t avoid this admission” that the models can’t be trusted as a policy instrument because, “You end up with numbers for even the near‐term that are insanely scary — and wrong.”

So, there you have it.

If GISS candidly admits that it can’t be trusted to predict the future of climate, much less any possible basis for believing humans can change any outcomes by switching from fossil energy to windmills and electric vehicles, why should NASA allow such irrelevant nonpredictions to influence future human expeditions to Mars and beyond?

Isn’t it time to make America’s once-visionary and inspirational space program great again, too?

Read more at Newsmax

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Andrew Craig-Bennett with financial advice for shipowners amid the Trump market gyrations.

Donald Trump has just backed away from the abyss – denying, of course, that he is doing any such thing – and, while adding yet more tariffs to imports from China to the US, he has announced a 90-day moratorium on tariffs over 10% imposed on US imports from most other nations. The US stock markets rose on the social media post, or as Trump would have it, the “truth”, and everyone relaxed a little. But not much, and with good reason. 

The insane gyrations in US trade policy, dictated as it is by one vain old man, who is prone to speaking in word salad, make it impossible for anyone to carry on international business – the business that we all rely on – in a normal way, and the China- USA trading relationship has become – at least until Trump changes his mind again – effectively impossible. 

Meanwhile, 10% tariffs – with, by the way, little evidence of a fully staffed, trained, capable and reliable US government department for collecting them – are spread all around.

So, how worried should the shipping industry be? Are we headed for a crash? Are we intimidated yet?

James Carville, president Clinton’s election strategist, is famous for two remarks. One is “The economy, stupid!”, which carried Bill Clinton into the White House and George Bush out of it, and the other is, “I used to think if there was reincarnation, I wanted to come back as the president or the Pope or as a .400 baseball hitter. But now I would like to come back as the bond market. You can intimidate everybody.”  

The bond market just intimidated president Trump.

We know how freight rate collapses start. I don’t mean mild corrections in the charter market; I mean collapses, like 1997 and 2008. 

They start with financial collapses – in the case of 1997, the Asian financial crisis and in the case of 2008 the sub-prime crisis.  

They start with financial collapses, because, if an importer cannot open a letter of credit – and trade finance is surely the simplest and most routine of all commercial banking activities – he isn’t going to buy whatever he wanted to buy, because he cannot open the letter of credit. 

The seller isn’t going to be able to negotiate his bill of lading, so he will not bring the cargo forward for loading. The cargo isn’t going to move. Freight rate collapses happen overnight, when ordinary banks decide that they cannot afford to extend trade credit as they normally would do.

These crashes are not the same thing as gentle increases in the supply of tonnage; they are sudden events .

Of course, we are all wondering if we are about to see another freight rate collapse, brought on by all this tariff malarkey in the White House.

Is there a simple way in which ordinary shipping people, with no knowledge of finance, can look at the financial markets, and say to themselves, “This looks as if there might be a financial collapse, which is dangerous for my industry. Maybe I should ask my bosses to not order that new ship?”

I think there may be. Try this. As we all know, when economic conditions become more difficult, professional investors move some of their holdings out of equities and into government bonds. Bond prices rise; bond yields fall.  Bonds are the safe haven.  

As long as this goes on, there is no risk of a financial collapse that might affect our market – freight rates.  This is just the financial world doing what it does.  When economic conditions look more cheerful, the professional investors sell bonds, they buy equities, and bond yields rise. All simple. 

Let’s suppose this doesn’t happen. Let’s suppose that equity prices fall and bond prices fall at the same time. This is an unusual event and it means one of two things, both of them extremely serious, one of which affects us.

One  situation – the one that caused Carville to “want to come back as the bond market” –  is the “bond vigilante” situation, in which big holders of government bonds express their dislike of a government’s financial policies by selling its bonds. We may consider for a moment that the three biggest holders of US government bonds are China, Japan and, more surprisingly, Britain. There is no sign of any of these holders selling their US treasuries. Yet.

Britain was on the receiving end of a bond crash when Liz Truss was, briefly, prime minister. This sort of action is rare; it affects one country, or two allied countries, at a time, and because it is so drastic, it doesn’t last long. We don’t need to bother our heads with that one; it affects governments, but it doesn’t affect freights.

The other case occurs when professional investors are selling bonds at a time when they ought to be buying them.  They will only be doing that if they urgently need liquidity in order to cover their positions.

That’s a financial crisis.  Banks are going to be affected, they will cut back, and trade credit will dry up. This is the rising bond yield situation combined with falling share prices that ought to scare us all silly.

We are not there yet, but we are close enough to it for financial people to be taking action, and for alarming headlines in financial reporting, including headlines suggesting that US treasury bonds might no longer be a safe haven.

So, if you are wondering what to do about that newbuilding order, I suggest that you look at the stock market and the bond market, together. Things could go over the edge. Or they might not. Keep watching the bond curve and the stock graph.

Good luck!

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