The week in charts: Why would US invade Panama? | Over 25 ships using scrapped IMO numbers | Tit-for-tat tariffs threat looms over VLGC market
Lloyd’s List’s weekly showing of the data and figures behind our news, analysis and markets coverage
US Senate hearing speakers theorised that Chinese workers could collapse under-construction bridge over Panama Canal; Lloyd’s List analysis reveals security flaws in shipping’s identification system; and China’s desire to decrease its dependence on grain imports has added further pain to an already suffering panamax segment
COULD US President Donald Trump declare Panama in violation of the Panama Canal neutrality treaty signed in 1977? He certainly could, and it’s a decent bet that he will, but what would come next?
Panama has had full legal sovereignty over the canal for 25 years and the canal is the centrepiece of the country’s economy, so the only way the US could recover the waterway would be a military invasion and imperialist takeover, wrote senior reporter Greg Miller.
Trump has complained about high canal fees, but a US invasion would disrupt if not shut down the canal, causing freight rates to spike and increasing costs for US importers and exporters.
The US Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation held a hearing on the Panama Canal. The gist of comments from Republican senators: Trump is right, the neutrality treaty has been violated, China and its spies are entrenched in Panama, and the US has the rationale to pre-emptively take the canal back.
Dead identities: over 25 ships using scrapped IMO numbers
Nearly 30 ships are sailing under what should be defunct International Maritime Organization ship identification numbers, highlighting security flaws in tracking systems at a time when shipping’s dark fleet* is under fire for directly facilitating sanctions evasion as well as being questioned for its role in grey-zone aggression, reported maritime risk analyst Bridget Diakun.
An IMO ship identification number is a permanent and unique identifier assigned to ships for identification purposes. The numbers are issued by S&P Global on behalf of the IMO.
Analysis of Lloyd’s List Intelligence Automatic Identification System data reveals 28 vessels transmitting the IMO numbers of scrapped ships since November 2024.
Although an IMO number is never meant to change, remaining with vessels through ownership changes, flag changes and after it heads to a recycling yard, it is relatively straightforward for this data to be altered in AIS receivers.
Tit-for-tat tariffs threat looms over VLGC market
Fundamentals for the very large gas carrier freight market are looking solid this year. US terminal capacity expansion in 2H25 should add more cargoes for export, additional propane dehydrogenation plant capacity is expected to come online in China and there is limited newbuilding capacity entering the global fleet, wrote senior reporter Tomer Rannan.
But the risk of a US trade war with China and retaliatory tariffs on US commodities could upend the positive outlook.
Grain cargoes to China plummet amid dwindling demand
The world’s largest grain importer is importing less grain, heaping more misery onto a beleaguered panamax segment, wrote reporter Joshua Minchin.
Grain shipments to China are down around 50% in January 2025, but in reality the downward trend started in the traditional peak season for grain, in the northern hemisphere autumn 2024.
The difference is perhaps starkest in US imports. Grain voyages leaving US ports (on the east, Gulf and Pacific northwest coasts) are down more than 50% in both December 2024 and January 2025 versus the same month the previous year.
* Lloyd’s List defines a tanker as part of the dark fleet if it is aged 15 years or over, anonymously owned and/or has a corporate structure designed to obfuscate beneficial ownership discovery, solely deployed in sanctioned oil trades, and engaged in one or more of the deceptive shipping practices outlined in US State Department guidance issued in May 2020. The figures exclude tankers tracked to government-controlled shipping entities such as Russia’s Sovcomflot, or Iran’s National Iranian Tanker Co, and those already sanctioned.