TARIFFS are bad enough — just look at the US stock market — but business leaders are warning of catastrophe if the Trump administration’s port fee plan goes forward.

The US Trade Representative announced on February 21 that it plans to levy exorbitant port fees — in some cases over a million dollars — for every US port call by Chinese transport operators, Chinese-built ships, all operators that have any ships on order at Chinese yards, and according to one interpretation of the proposal (based on a presidential draft order obtained by Lloyd’s List), all operators with any Chinese-built ships in their fleets.

The USTR plan would also mandate that a portion of US exports be carried on US-flagged and, eventually, US-built vessels.

Respondents had until Monday to submit comments to the USTR if they wanted to testify at the hearing on the proposal on March 24. They responded in droves, overwhelmingly negatively, with several predicting a disaster for importers, exporters and the US economy in general if the USTR did not kill the port fee plan.

Some executives also bluntly asserted that if the plan was approved as written, their companies would go out of business or leave the US.

Florida-based Seaboard Marine, the largest US-based, foreign-flag container shipping carrier, which serves the Caribbean and Central and South America, said the proposed rule “would have the unintended consequence of putting US-owned carriers like Seaboard Marine out of business, while at the same time pushing more business into the hands of large foreign-owned carriers”.

Virginia-based Atlantic Container Line, which operates in the transatlantic trade, said it “would be forced to terminate its US services, close its American offices, lay off its American staff and redeploy its ships to other trades”.

Dry bulk logistics provider Carver Companies, which employs over 500 people, said, “The additional financial burden would likely force us out of business, leading to significant job losses and economic disruption in the regions we serve.”

Peeples Industries, which runs a private dry bulk terminal in Savannah, Georgia, said, “The proposed action would put our company out of business.”

Bermuda Container Line, which operates the Chinese-built Oleander (IMO: 9827334) on weekly service to Bermuda from New York/New Jersey, said, “There is almost a certainty that the added financial cost would threaten its survival, jeopardising one of Bermuda’s only dedicated services”, leading to food shortages on the island.

Somers Isles Shipping, a small operator transporting 150 teu per voyage or 4,000 teu per year on biweekly service from Port Fernandina, Florida to Bermuda, said, “This fee would simply put us out of business in one voyage.”

Hans Laue, president of Florida-based brokerage Gisholt Shipping, warned that the USTR fees “would, at the very least, cause the demise of dozens of American small- and medium-sized businesses, resulting in tens of thousands of jobs.” The worst case, Laue said: “Applying them as proposed could be Armageddon for American industries and American citizens across the board.”

Tanker shipping

US President Donald Trump insists he will boost US oil and gas exports, but port taxes would be passed along via charter parties to energy cargo shippers, inflating the cost of US exports and reducing their competitiveness.

The American Petroleum Institute, the US energy sector’s top lobbyist, said the USTR plan could “undermine President Trump’s ‘energy dominance’ agenda” by making it “more challenging to export oil, LNG and refined products”, and would also “hinder the US’s ability to import crude oil”.

According to NYSE-listed Energy Products Partners, the US export tanker cargo preference requirements “would inadvertently guarantee that there will be no ‘drill baby drill’. The ‘liquid gold’ under our feet would stay in the ground.”

INEOS, a leading exporter of US ethane, said the proposed port fees “risk rendering the export of US ethane gas uneconomical”.

Dry bulk shipping

The responses were even more ominous from dry bulk shippers.

The US National Mining Association said, “Increased costs, supply chain disruptions and even the outright inability to import or export critical materials could bring the industry to a standstill.”

According to the West Virginia Coal Association, “It may prove impossible for coal-exporting companies to secure an adequate number of appropriately designed and sized vessels to avoid the proposed port fees. Imposition of the port fees will simply price West Virginia coal out of the seaborne energy market. This rule is not only onerous, but unnecessary and impossible to manage and will serve to punish major export states like West Virginia.”

According to the American Soybean Association, “The US does not have the domestic-flag capacity to handle our export market at the rate proposed by the USTR. We are extremely concerned that if this proposal goes into effect, US soybeans will be effectively shut out from our global export markets.”

Bulker charterer KOGA said that a typical US Gulf-Mediterranean voyage cost on a 10,000 dwt vessel would be $70 per tonne without the proposed port tax, and $170 per tonne with the tax. “This increased cost would make such voyages financially unfeasible,” it asserted.

IMI, a logistics provider that handles gypsum and cement imports to the US and exports of coal and petcoke from the US, said the broad USTR port-fee criteria “would capture virtually every vessel IMI charters” and “would result in an annual cost burden of $180m-$630m, which will become a direct pass-through expense to IMI’s US customers”.

Lightship Chartering pointed to the 10m tonnes of rock salt that is imported annually from overseas for road de-icing in the US northeast. The USTR plan would double the cost of imported salt from $20 per tonne to $40 per tonne, it said, adding that local US municipalities would not be able to cover the rise with tax increases.

Peeples Industries president Frank Peeples Jr estimated that freight on dry bulk cargoes from Georgia to Europe on a handysize vessel would rise from $24 per tonne to $55.25 per tonne.

“Trading this cargo will no longer be viable. What I can’t understand is a rule on bulk vessels that will require a fee greater than the typical bulk freight cost to Europe or even greater than the value of the product itself. This rule seems to assume that many of these commodities on targeted Chinese-built bulk vessels are captive and therefore will be forced to pay. That assumption is wrong. These products at the fee levels proposed will not trade. Full stop.”

Container shipping

If the USTR fee goes forward, the container liner industry would switch Chinese-built ships out of US trades. To the extent they cannot avoid port fees, liners would seek to pass along the added costs as a surcharge.

Multiple cargo shipper respondents to the USTR proposals asked that shipping lines be denied the ability to pass along port fee costs. But that won’t help freight rates, because if that happens, liners would pull ships from unprofitable US services, as they have every right to do. Freight rates would then increase, not due to surcharges, but due to lower capacity.

According to Andrew Abbott, chief executive of ACL, “This would cause a freight rate explosion that would dwarf the Covid-era rate increase and devastate the supply chains of American companies.”

The National Retail Federation said, “The fees will result in costs increases of hundreds of dollars per container for cargo owners.” Shifts in service by ocean carriers “would cause significant disruption due to port congestion”.

According to the Chamber of Shipping of America, “The imposition of the proposed port fees….would cause a significant disruption to the US maritime market with expected disruptions to the supply chain and/or significantly increased shipping costs, which would ultimately be borne by US producers and US consumers.”

Ocean carriers would also reduce the number of US port calls per service string to reduce exposure to charges, cutting calls to tertiary ports and only calling at the largest ones.

“The fees would generate congestion at larger ports, as operators of vessels subject to fees seek to minimise the number of US port calls those vessels make on each route,” said the World Shipping Council. “Economic impacts of congestion and reduced US port traffic [due to shifts to Mexico and Canada] would reverberate throughout the economy.”

US exporters of containerised goods would be even harder hit than importers, given their lower freight rates, which would be much more heavily impacted by port-fee fallout than US importers.

The US Agriculture Transportation Coalition (AgTC), which represents US exporters of containerised agricultural and forest goods, said, “Many components of our farm country and port network will suffer: marine terminals, longshore labour, freight forwarders, logistics companies, warehouse operators, and drayage and over-the-road trucking firms.

“The transport cost increase would quickly render US ag unaffordable and uncompetitive, and because there is ample substitute supply from other countries, it would end US ag sales to foreign markets.”

Summing up the worst-case scenario for US exports and imports, the Association of Ship Brokers & Agents wrote, “One thing is certain: If the maximum fees are imposed, the resulting economic pain will reverberate through every sector of the US economy and in every household.”