Seaspan Corp is none too worried about US' plan to tax hundreds of billions of dollars more in Chinese imports.
The Trump administration last week threatened to put a 10% tax on the remaining $300bn in goods coming from the country by 1 September in its latest round of tariffs.
The White House gradually placed a 25% tax on $250bn-worth of products since the trade war began a year ago.
"For Seaspan, we don't see any impact," chief executive Bing Chen said today during the company's second-quarter earnings call.
"This is actually evidenced by the fact that since June that we have zero idle for the entire fleet of 112 vessels."
The Hong Kong-based company's fleet utilisation came in at 98.7% for the second quarter, during which earnings attributable to common shareholders fell to $21.8m from $49.2m.
Boxship sector may see negative effect
Chen said the entire containership sector, however, may not go completely unscathed by Trump's latest move against the world's second largest economy.
"For the industry, we see, based on the forecasts by the research as a whole, the impact is probably somewhere in the guesswork of about 2% as a negative impact to the total industry," he said.
"The impact will obviously be primarily in the area of the transpacific."
Boxship owners will most likely find business on other routes, however, to offset any slowed demand for shipping goods between US and China, he said. Growth in north-south routes may also counter less demand for transpacific shipping, he said.
"Ultimately, it's a matter for shipping that you're moving goods from point A to B," he said.
Boxship owners may also benefit in the very near term from US retailers trying to get as many goods from China as possible before the latest tariff possibly hits 1 September.
"That actually could also have an acceleration factor to the demand side of it," he said.
