Trade War With China Escalates To Include Port Shipping Fees

By Mish Shedlock of MishTalk
Wednesday, October 15, 2025 2:29 PM EDT


New Port Fees on Chinese Ships

Politico reports Port Fees are the Next Front in the Trade War.

The U.S.-China trade war has lurched from fragile truce to bare-knuckle brawl. It is about to intensify further when the two countries hike fees on each others’ commercial ships Tuesday — a move that, on the U.S. side, could end up raising consumer costs and driving down imports from Asia.

Along with a new tussle over China’s global chokehold on the supply of critical minerals — which prompted President Donald Trump to threaten 100 percent tariffs and new curbs on “all critical software” in retaliation — China’s Ministry of Transport announced Friday that it is matching the Trump administration’s planned increase in port fees on Chinese-owned and operated ships.

”This is symbolic — less than 1 percent of U.S. vessels docking in China annually are U.S.-flagged vessels, so the reality is this basically has no real impact,” said Cameron Johnson, a senior partner at Shanghai-based supply chain consultancy Tidalwave Solutions. “But it signals that Beijing will match every single effort the United States targets against China — if the U.S. sanctions a Chinese company, they’re going to sanction a U.S. company. If we impose export controls on technology, they’re going to do export controls on technology. We have just now escalated to a whole new level of trade warfare that nobody was expecting.”

The Trump administration says the U.S. port fees will help spark a renaissance for the U.S. shipbuilding industry and reduce what the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative says is a risky U.S. dependency on Chinese shippers.

Major ocean carriers have signaled they plan to absorb the new costs. But U.S. retailers, manufacturers and shipping experts warn that will likely be short-lived and that eventually they will have to pass the fees on to consumers. The higher costs will further strain the shipping industry, which transports more than 80 percent of global trade and is already grappling with the disruptive effects of Trump’s sweeping tariffs.

Cargo imports to the U.S. carried by ships that are either Chinese-owned or operated by Chinese companies will face port fees of $50 per ton starting next week, with the fee set to increase by $30 per ton each year over the next three years. Non-Chinese operators of ships built in China will also face charges, according to the new policy. China’s retaliatory port charges will also annually escalate to a maximum of $157 in 2028.

The new penalties are the result of a petition filed last year by five U.S. labor unions, which triggered a trade investigation that found that China’s maritime and shipbuilding practices are harmful to the U.S. industry, which has been in decline since the late 1970s.

“If the goal is to get U.S. shipbuilding back up and running, we think there are other ways that we need to focus on doing that — just putting fees on Chinese vessels isn’t going to solve that issue,” said Jonathan Gold, the vice president of supply chain and customs policy at the National Retail Federation, a D.C.-based group that represents companies in the retail sector.

In a statement released Sunday. a spokesperson for China’s Commerce ministry said the the port fee retaliation represented “necessary defensive actions aimed at safeguarding the legitimate rights and interests of Chinese industries and enterprises, as well as preserving a fair competitive environment in the international shipping and shipbuilding markets.”

The U.S. port fees on Chinese ships are predicted to have a much larger impact on the shipping industry. Maritime consultancy firm Alphaliner found in an analysis published earlier this month that the fees will cost the top 10 container shipping companies — including China’s state-owned shipper COSCO, Denmark’s Maersk and France’s CMA CGM — a total of $3.2 billion by the end of 2026.

“The fees can’t help but have a constraint on the shipping cargo capacity coming to the U.S. and with less capacity, the pricing of shipping goes up meaning you could literally have empty shelves during Christmas,” said John McCown, a fellow at the Center for Maritime Strategy and an expert on international container shipping.

“We’re looking at a full year or more where you’ll see double-digit declines in container traffic and that’s going to have a direct impact on dock workers,” McCown said. “The truck drivers that move those loads, the warehousing — everybody that touches that is going to be hurt and there’ll be jobs lost.”


Deesacalate Talk Vanishes

There was talk over the weekend of efforts to deescalate the trade war. That talk lasted all of two days.


Reciprocal Port Fees


Economic Hostile Act to Not Buy Soybeans

Why can’t China buy soybeans wherever it wants? Who started this trade war anyway?


Farm Bankruptcies


China’s Export Surge Without the US


Paper Tiger Department


Trump’s Myopic View of Trade

Trump views trade as having a winner and a loser.

But other than coercion or force, both sides believe they benefit from a deal or there is no deal.

Trump changed all of that into “Trump Knows Best”.

Trump will not honor even his own deals. There is no trust and there won’t be trust.


Why Tariffs Won’t Fix Manufacturing

  • No one knows what the hell trump will do, what exceptions he will make, or when.
  • The lead times for steel, aluminum, and copper mill expansion are too large.
  • Electricity costs are rising
  • Intermediate production demand is getting killed.


Related Posts

February 11, 2025: Trump’s Steel Tariffs Now Will Work as Good as the First Time

Q: How’s that? A: Very poorly.

October 12, 2025: US and Canada Have a New Spat Over Auto Tariffs

“Our relationship will never again be what it was,” said Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney

September 6, 2025: Trump’s Aluminum Tariffs Seriously Backfire Already

Tariffs did not and will not bring production back to the US.

And port fees will not make shipbuilding in the US great again. The only thing Trump will accomplish from the new spat is higher prices.

More By This Author:

Will Your Medicare Plan Be Cancelled? Expect To Pay More And Get Less
Even Non-Importing Firms Expect Big Price Hikes In 2026
Fed Debates Whether A $6 Trillion Balance Sheet Is Ample
How did you like this article? Let us know so we can better customize your reading experience.

Comments

Leave a comment to automatically be entered into our contest to win a free Echo Show.
Or Sign in with