United States Trade Representative (USTR) Jamieson Greer told the Senate Finance Committee on 8 April that the Trump administration was planning to reverse course on the port fees it had previously proposed for Chinese-owned and Chinese-built ships in U.S. ports.
“[The port fees are] not all going to be implemented. They’re not all going to be stacked,” Greer told U.S. lawmakers, according to Reuters, adding that he wanted to “make sure that we have the right amount of time, the right incentives, to bring shipbuilding here without impacting our economy.”
The original proposal, which was shared by the USTR on 24 February, sought to combat Chinese shipping dominance by charging USD 1.5 million (EUR 1.3 million) for Chinese-built vessels and USD 500,000 (EUR 446,928) for vessels with Chinese-built ships in their fleets. The policy stemmed from a nearly 200-page investigation conducted by the USTR, which argued that China had used unfair shipping practices to gain its dominance in the shipping industry.
The proposal to charge China-affiliated ships U.S. port fees prompted an outcry from the shipping and logistics industry, with experts and business leaders saying the fees would amount to an additional tariff.
"It would appear the shipper is the innocent bystander, but ultimately, the consumer is left with the bill as the cost of goods and services go up," a National Fisheries Institute representative told SeafoodSource at the time.
The USTR has not yet released more details about how the proposal might be reshaped, though the Trump administration has continued to escalate its trade war with China, imposing 125 percent tariffs on the nation's exports on 9 April.
