Trump’s Spinal Tap moment is a positive for shipping

DONALD Trump’s Spotify playlist is thought to include Metallica and Guns N’ Roses. So he may well have seen the seminal mock documentary This is Spinal Tap, which follows the fortunes of a spectacularly gormless fictional British heavy metal band on a make-or-break US comeback tour.

The 1984 film’s most famous gag depicts lead guitarist Nigel Tufnel pointing to his Marshall amplifier and bragging to an onlooker that it goes up to 11.

That, he insists, provides him with volume “one louder” when the exigencies of extended soloing demand “that extra push over the cliff”.

Earlier this week, Trump bigged-up his face-to-face trade talks with his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping with notably Tufnelesque logic, commenting: “On a scale of 0-10, with 10 being the best, the meeting was a 12.”

Mathematical impossibility notwithstanding, our industry will be moderately cheered by the outcome of this high-level confab.

It is indisputably good news that the port fee wars between the US and China will shortly be put on ice for at least a year, not least because it provides a breathing space for the two sides to walk away from such silliness altogether.

The doctrine of Mutually Assured Destruction arose from the emergence of nuclear weapons during the Cold War. But trade policy can be MAD too.

Charging ships a million dollars every time they call in the countries that are home to world’s largest and second-largest economies, while whacking double- and even triple-digit percentage point tariffs on the goods they carry, was never going to be a good idea.

Such mechanisms are immensely retrogressive, not just in terms of the narrow interests of shipping as a sector, but the standpoint of sanity itself.

The impacts have been very real. As we reported yesterday, Höegh Autoliners is budgeting up to $70m a year to meet the charges.

While car carriers have been specially singled out for a punishment beating that they in no way deserve, the bills for the biggest boxship outfits could go higher still.

But however much we welcome the temporary truce, the reality is that underlying issues have not been resolved. To steal the current Generation Alpha meme, what we have before us is, at best, six-seven rather than 12.

Tension between Washington and Beijing remains elevated, and the trade imbalance between the US and the nation that both makes the things American consumers want to buy and lends them the money with which to buy them remains cavernous.

Tariffs on imports from China may have been reduced, but still sit at 47% — more than twice the level in place at the start of this year — although transhipment seems to offer a partial workaround.

Also on the upside, China has thrown in a few sweeteners, including easing controls on the exports of rare earth minerals and resuming purchases of US soyabeans.

Even so, the prevailing air of uncertainty will be unsettling for shipowners, who routinely have to make investment decisions on expensive assets with a projected 25-year lifespan.

Should they be ordering newbuildings from Chinese yards or not? What will their existing assets be worth in one year’s time? How is it even possible to undertake sensible route planning right now? What happens to the wider logistics chain?

One of the causes of US-China friction is Beijing’s allegedly lax stance towards the export of precursor chemicals needed to make the synthetic opioid fentanyl, which is being taken recreationally by an estimated 500,000 Americans a year.

Users of the drug are said to experience relaxation, euphoria, pain relief, sedation, confusion, drowsiness, dizziness, nausea and vomiting. Many shipping professionals will no doubt be able to relate.

Meanwhile, to throw in a gratuitous Thin Lizzy reference that only ageing rockers are likely to get, the boys are back in town. Director Rob Reiner’s long-awaited sequel Spinal Tap II: The End Continues hit cinema screens last month.

Unfortunately, given Trump’s mercurial nature, there is no guarantee that the peace deal signed off in Busan will prove equally enduring.

To put things in terms that even Nigel Tufnel and his chums would understand, the case for free trade needs to be made one louder.