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The International Group of P&I Clubs finalized its reinsurance arrangements for the 2026/27 policy year, effective from noon on 20 February 2026. Four of the five vessel categories got a rate reduction. One did not. Fully cellular container ships went up 15 percent, to $1.0237 per gross ton. Persistent oil tankers fell 8 percent, dry cargo fell 5 percent, passenger vessels fell 8.5 percent, and clean tankers were held flat. For a container operator, that is a cost increase ar

On 10 November 2025, the United States and China each suspended the port fee regimes they had imposed on one another's shipping. The suspension runs twelve months. It expires on 10 November 2026, which is roughly five weeks from now, and there is no guarantee it will be renewed. Most charter parties fixed since then have been written as though the fees do not exist, because at the moment of fixing they did not. If the measures resume, those contracts will be silent on a charg

The bill of lading is the most important document in international trade and one of the few that does three unrelated jobs at once. It is a receipt for goods, evidence of the contract of carriage, and a document of title that can be bought, sold, and pledged while the cargo is still at sea. Most of the disputes that arise around it come from confusing those functions or from treating the third one as a formality. A shipper who focuses on the description of goods, a carrier wh

On September 9, a Federal Maritime Commission administrative law judge rejected Peloton Interactive's claim against Flexport in full. The company had sought $33.7 million in detention, demurrage, and storage charges accumulated during the pandemic-era supply chain disruption. It recovered nothing. The breakdown of what was claimed is instructive. Roughly $13.8 million in demurrage, $16.2 million in equipment detention, and $3.7 million in yard and warehouse storage, across th

A container ship catches fire in the Arabian Sea. Your cargo is in a hold that never burned, on a vessel you do not own, in a casualty you had nothing to do with. Weeks later you receive a demand for 54 percent of the value of your goods before anyone will release them. That is not a mistake and it is not extortion. It is general average, one of the oldest surviving principles in commercial law, and the demand is enforceable. For cargo interests it is the single most surprisi

Two years after Houthi attacks pushed the container trades around the Cape of Good Hope, the largest carriers are transiting the Red Sea again. MSC sent seven boxships through the Suez Canal this month. Maersk returned its MECL service to the trans-Suez route in August, having made its first tentative transit in December. CMA CGM has been running services through the corridor since late last year. What is striking is not that the return is happening. It is how it is happening

On August 17, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers granted the federal permit authorizing construction of the Louisiana International Terminal at Violet in St. Bernard Parish, on the Lower Mississippi River downriver from New Orleans. The permit clears the last major regulatory hurdle for what Port NOLA describes as the only new greenfield container port currently under development in the United States. Construction is expected to take five years. The projected investment is roug