Shipping companies are skeptical of Donald Trump's truce with the Houthis

The Fed cut its benchmark short-term rate by 1 percentage point in the second half of 2024 as inflation declined

- Stephen Kalin, Costas Paris & Benoit Faucon

Shippers aren't yet confident enough to return to routes through the Red Sea, despite a tentative cease-fire deal between the U.S. and Yemen's Houthi militia.

The top five container-shipping companies said they were assessing the deal announced Tuesday by President Trump but had no immediate plans to return to the area where the Houthis began targeting merchant ships in late 2023 in response to the war in the Gaza Strip.

"We are not going back any time soon," said Nils Haupt, a spokesman for German liner Hapag-Lloyd.

"It's a good development, but it needs a lot of security guarantees for the Red Sea to be considered safe for big merchant ships."

Shippers said the area will remain volatile as long as the war continues.

And while the Houthis and U.S. pledged not to attack each other while the cease-fire holds, the agreement is vague and makes no clear mention of ending attacks on commercial shipping, said Christopher Long, intelligence director at security firm Neptune P2P Group and a former British naval officer.

A Pentagon official said there is still work to be done to guarantee safe navigation, which could include limited Navy escorts for crossing ships as the truce begins and diplomacy to get the Houthis to stop attacking Israel.

The Houthis said Wednesday that they fired drones at Israel. The Israeli military said it had intercepted a drone attack.