USTR's Port Fees on Chinese Ships Are Still Set to Return November 10, Though Treasury Says the Truce Runs to January

The Office of the US Trade Representative’s fees on Chinese-built and Chinese-operated ships are suspended only until 11:59 pm on 9 November 2026. That date is set in a USTR notice published last November. On 23 September Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said the wider US-China truce would run to 10 January 2027. USTR hasn’t published anything to match.

The two dates are now about two months apart. Shipping lines, importers and charterers are pricing voyages that will arrive after 9 November, and the only legal text in force says the fees come back the next morning.

What USTR imposed

The fees come from a Section 301 investigation into China’s targeting of the maritime, logistics and shipbuilding sectors, opened after a petition from the United Steelworkers and other unions in March 2024. USTR published its action on 23 April 2025 and modified it on 16 October.

There are three schedules. Ships owned or operated by Chinese entities pay per net ton: $50 from 14 October 2025, rising to $80 in April 2026, $110 in 2027 and $140 in 2028. Other operators of Chinese-built ships pay the higher of a net-ton fee or a fee per container unloaded, starting at $18 a net ton or $120 a container and rising to $33 and $250 by 2028. A third schedule charges every foreign-built car carrier, whatever its link to China, $46 a net ton.

Each ship pays at most five times a year. The Chinese-built schedule exempts ships of 4,000 TEU or less, voyages under 2,000 nautical miles, ships arriving empty and US-flagged ships in the Maritime Administration’s programmes. An owner that orders and takes delivery of a US-built ship of equal or larger size can have the fees waived for up to three years. The October modification also set 100% tariffs on Chinese ship-to-shore cranes and chassis, due to start on 9 November 2025, and dropped a rule that would have forced a share of US LNG exports onto US-built ships.

The fees were collected for less than four weeks. There’s no provision to refund what was paid between 14 October and 9 November 2025.

The Busan deal

After Donald Trump and Xi Jinping met in Busan on 30 October 2025, USTR opened a one-day comment period on 6 November and suspended the vessel fees, the car carrier fee and the crane tariffs for one year from 10 November. The terms of that deal are covered in our post on the trade truce.

Beijing suspended its own response on the same day. Its Ministry of Transport had announced “special port fees” on 10 October 2025 for ships owned, operated, flagged or built in the US, or owned by companies at least 25% held by US interests: 400 yuan a ton from 14 October, rising to 1,120 yuan by April 2028. China’s Commerce Ministry had also sanctioned five US subsidiaries of the Korean shipbuilder Hanwha Ocean, including Hanwha Philly Shipyard, in October 2025. Both measures were paused for a year from 10 November. So was a Chinese investigation into how the US action affected its shipbuilding industry.

Two dates, one notice

Bessent’s statement on the truce extension was made in an interview and doesn’t amend a Federal Register notice. By the start of October, trade lawyers and freight forwarders were advising clients that the 9 November expiry stands unless USTR publishes a new modification. The White House fact sheet on the September summit with Xi didn’t mention the vessel fees.

Industry has asked for a decision. On 23 September a letter signed by more than 200 groups, among them the National Retail Federation, the Retail Industry Leaders Association, the American Apparel and Footwear Association and the Agriculture Transportation Coalition, asked USTR Ambassador Jamieson Greer to extend the suspension before 9 November. They argued that fees alone won’t rebuild US shipbuilding and that US farm exports would face retaliation.

The exposure is large. Alphaliner estimated the top ten container lines would have paid about $3.2 billion in fees in 2026, with COSCO the most exposed. Some non-Chinese owners have already moved: Seaspan shifted its head office from Hong Kong to Singapore and reflagged much of its fleet there.

What a lapse would mean

If the fees return on 10 November, the schedule’s April 2026 step-ups, which never took effect, become the reference rates. On that schedule a Chinese-operated ship would pay $80 a net ton, so a 50,000 net ton ship would pay $4 million a call. China’s fees would come back too, on its own schedule at 640 yuan. US-flagged container ships that call in China, a small group run by Matson, Maersk and CMA CGM, would pay them.

The fees also sit awkwardly next to the White House’s own maritime plan. Its February 2026 Maritime Action Plan proposes a universal fee on all foreign-built ships calling at US ports, assessed on cargo weight. That would need an act of Congress. The Section 301 fees need only a USTR notice, in either direction, and the one that matters hasn’t been written yet.