Will the Biden presidency be good for container ship demand?

摘要

President Biden s electoral win and inauguration have come at a time when container ship rates have remained sky high, with vessel demand surging globally after almost standstill operations in HI 2020. After experiencing record-high earnings in Q3 and Q4 2020, the container ship sector is expected to continue recovering through 2021.The best-performing container ship types have been the larger sizes, listed in descending size order from left to right in Figure 1. For example, rates for post-Panamax-type container ships reached US$36,000 at the start of January 2021, 20% higher than the same period in the previous year. It is also evident that January 2021 rates for sub-Panamax-type container ships were up 50% compared with the same period in 2020. These strong market conditions for the larger container ship types have trickled down to the smaller Handysize to Feedermax vessel types, which have seen rates increasing since the beginning of Q3 2020,ut at a slower velocity than the larger types.