Peak Pegasus, a cargo ship that has been circling off the Chinese coast for over a month will finally dock at Dalian’s Beiliang port on August 11, Liaoning Maritime Safety Administration told CGTN’s reporter on Friday.
The cargo ship, owned by JPMorgan Asset Management, left Seattle on June 8 on a month-long voyage to the northeastern Chinese city of Dalian. The trade conflict between the US and China was sparked just as it left, with the US imposing tariffs on billions of dollars’ worth of Chinese imports.
The Peak Pegasus was due to deliver its 70,000-ton cargo of soybeans on July 6, but missed the tariff deadline. Offloading those US soybeans in China would incur a 25 percent tariff, adding around six million US dollars to the cost of bringing them into the country, according to the Guardian.
The American Soybean Association (ASA) has expressed "extreme disappointment" in the US move of imposing further tariffs on Chinese goods, which they believe will "needlessly hurt soybean growers and rural communities" in America. The ASA once again called on the administration to find a non-tariff solution to address its trade issue with China, such as utilizing soybeans as the largest agricultural export to help reduce the US trade deficit with China.
In early July, the US administration imposed an additional 25 percent tariff on 34 billion US dollars’ worth of imports from China, forcing a retaliation from China on US imports.
China imported about 33 million tons of soybeans from the US last year and takes about 62 percent of all US soybean exports annually.
China’s Sinograin, the group that handles the state grain stockpiles, is also the purchaser of these US soybeans brought by Peak Pegasus. The company will settle the relevant import duties and tax according to the customs regulations of China.
