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Twice shy
US-Houthi ceasefire claim not sufficient for Red Sea return: carriers
By Greg Knowler
Trump said the US has suspended aerial strikes in Yemen after the Houthis“ capitulated.” KHALED DESOUKI / Contributor Getty Images
Maersk and Hapag-Lloyd have ruled out an imminent return to Red Sea transits despite an assertion from US President Donald Trump in early May that Houthi militants in Yemen“ have capitulated” and agreed to stop attacks on commercial shipping in the region.
Maersk CEO Vincent Clerc told analysts it would not be responsible to return to the Red Sea and Suez Canal when there were no guarantees over the safety of crew, ships and cargo. That means Maersk vessels will continue to divert around southern Africa.
“ If the US will stop bombing [ the Houthis ], that’ s good,” Clerc said during a May 8 earnings call.“ Whether this means there is not only safety today, but safety for the foreseeable future for us sending our colleagues, our assets and our customers’ cargo through the Red Sea again, we’ re pretty far from that threshold.”
Trump said the Houthi had“ capitulated” and that the US would suspend its aerial strikes on militant positions in Yemen.
“ They just don’ t want to fight,” Trump told reporters.“ We will honor that, and we will stop the bombings. But, more importantly, we will take their word. They say they will not be blowing up ships anymore, and that’ s the purpose of what we were doing.”
Ocean carriers have been forced to divert around the Cape of Good Hope for the past 18 months to avoid missile and drone attacks launched by the Houthi from southern Yemen. The militants have said the attacks were a show of solidarity for Gaza amid the Israel-Hamas war.
A Houthi official told Reuters the US and Houthis had agreed to“ no longer target each other,” but that attacks on Israel would continue. However, a Houthi media statement issued on May 7, just one day after the Trump ceasefire announcement, claimed the militants had conducted an attack against the US aircraft carrier Harry S. Truman and its support vessels.
‘ Really not responsible’
Jack Kennedy, head of Middle East and North Africa country risk at S & P Global Market Intelligence, said the US-Houthi ceasefire announcement represented“ a pragmatic, limited de-escalation rather than a pathway toward comprehensive peace.”
“ The Houthis are likely to use any relative pause in US bombing to rearm and rebuild infrastructure that has been targeted over the course of the existing campaign that began on March 15,” Kennedy said in a customer brief following the announcement.
“ Houthi targeting and identification of vessels it accuses of supporting Israel has previously, in our view, been inconsistent and based on incomplete information, maintaining severe risks for shipping in transit due to misidentification,” he added.
“ We will take their word. They say they will not be blowing up ships anymore.”
An Israel-Hamas ceasefire and the Houthis’ pledge to not attack commercial vessels was announced in January, but did not provide enough certainty to most container lines to restart their Suez Canal sailings.
Clerc said the strong link between Houthi attacks and the Gaza war, which he said was worsening, and the lack of any formal details of White House’ s claim of a US-Houthi ceasefire, rendered the chances of a return of shipping to the Red Sea this year“ very, very low.”
“ Going through something as complex, costly and hard to reverse as a complete redeployment of our shipping networks back through the Red Sea based on news of a deal whose contour we don’ t understand, whose terms we don’ t understand, and which has been breached already, I think is really not responsible,” he said.
The carrier’ s Gemini Cooperation partner Hapag-Lloyd also said its position on sailing through the Red Sea also remained unchanged following the comments by Trump.“ There is not much we can say at this point, other than that we will continue to closely monitor and analyze the latest developments and their impact on the security situation in the Red Sea,” Hapag-Lloyd spokesperson Tim Seifert told the Journal of Commerce.“ Otherwise, the following applies unchanged: We will return to the Red Sea when it is safe to do so.”
email: greg. knowler @ spglobal. com
22 Journal of Commerce | June 2, 2025 www. joc. com