Peak Pegasus: Drifting cargo ship is a victim of US-China trade war

A
cargo ship — not the Peak Pegasus.
Reuters

• A US cargo ship carrying $20 million of soybeans has
  been circling off the Chinese coast for over a month.
• The ship became an internet sensation on Chinese social
  media as it raced to deliver its cargo last month before new
  Beijing tariffs took effect.
• The ship, called the Peak Pegasus, has been drifting in
  circles off the coast of Dalian ever since.
• Peak Pegasus is a casualty of the ongoing US-China
  trade war.

A container ship carrying a $20 million worth of soybeans has
been circling off the Chinese coast for over a month after being
caught in the middle of the US-China trade war.

The Peak Pegasus, which is owned by JPMorgan Asset Management,
left Seattle on June 8 on a month-long voyage to the Chinese city
of Dalian. The trade war between the US and China was just
erupting as it left, with Trump imposing tariffs on billions of
dollars worth of Chinese imports.

The US ship was due to deliver its 70,000-tonne cargo on July 6,

The Guardian reported but missed the tariff deadline. The
Peak Pegasus arrived around 5 hours after China
imposed retaliatory tariffs on US goods, including soybeans.

The ship has been off the coast of Dalian ever since and is
currently drifting in circles at 0.1knots.

The ship — a 43,000 tonne, 229-metre long bulk carrier — has
become a symbol of the disruption caused by the trade war between
Beijing and Washington. It became a sensation on the Chinese
social media site Weibo, according to the Guardian.

The cargo belongs to the agricultural commodity trading house
Louis Dreyfus. It is estimated to be paying around $12,500 a day
to continue chartering the ship, meaning the company has already
paid around $400,000 in extra costs since the ship arrived.

Commodities experts told The Guardian it could still make
financial sense to keep the shipment at sea. The tariffs that
China imposed just before the ship arrived are 25%, which would
add around $6 million to the cost of importing the soybeans.

The US-China trade dispute
continued on Wednesday after US President Donald Trump announced
a fresh $16 billion wave of tariffs and China responded in equal
measure.

China’s commerce ministry said the new tariffs were “very
unreasonable practice” and Beijing responded with 25% tariffs on
another 333 separate US products from 23 August.