Top 50 Global Container Ports

Special Report

COMMENTARY

By Matthew Leech

America has dedicated funding mechanisms to support other freight infrastructure, but not ports.

When you fill up your gas tank, a portion of that purchase flows directly into the Highway Trust Fund, a dedicated pool of capital that directs approximately $ 40 billion annually into America’ s roads and bridges. When you purchase a ticket for a flight, a similar mechanism funds aviation infrastructure.

These are not accidents; they are the result of a deliberate national strategy of identifying critical infrastructure and creating a userfunded mechanism for systematic investment.

America has built dedicated funding mechanisms to support road, aviation, inland waterway and other freight infrastructure. What has never had a dedicated mechanism is maritime port infrastructure itself— the terminals, berths and cargo handling systems that move most goods entering and leaving this country. The Maritime Action Plan’ s( MAP) proposed Maritime Security Trust Fund is a long-overdue effort to close that gap, and our industry should work together to get the implementation right.

We already have proof of concept. The Harbor Maintenance Trust Fund has generated approximately $ 1.7 billion annually for nearly 40 years to maintain the depth of America’ s waterways. Yet its narrow mandate means it cannot reach the broader infrastructure challenges pressing against us today: aging terminals, cargo handling equipment made obsolete before it has depreciated, and berths that can no longer accommodate the vessels being routed to them.

At ports across the US, terminal operators are sitting with infrastructure that is not especially old— cranes only 15 years into a useful life, berths built to a standard reasonable a decade ago— and watching it become functionally obsolete because container lines have spent 35 years scaling vessel sizes without considering the downstream cost.

The lines can, and often do, upsize their fleet to capture the economies of scale, but the ports don’ t have it so easy. Port infrastructure is built for a 50-year horizon, while the average age for scrapping a container ship is about 17 years.

There is also the intensity question. A single 18,000-TEU vessel arriving on a Monday does not represent dispersed, manageable cargo flow, but a compressed peak demand event simultaneously hitting the terminal, the gate, the truck network and the rail yard. It’ s good business for the carrier, but not for everybody else.

The MAP currently proposes a weightbased fee on imported cargo, which many are questioning. The better path— and the more precise mechanism— is a fee assessed on the vessel size itself, scaled to gross tonnage. The stress degrading American port infrastructure is not caused by cargo weight or value. It is caused by vessel size. Air draft, water draft, berth length, crane reach— every dimension of port capacity being strained today— is a function of how large ships have gotten.

A tiered tonnage fee captures that relationship directly: vessels under a defined gross tonnage threshold pay a base rate or are exempt; midsize ships pay more; the largest vessels— the ones creating the greatest infrastructure demand— pay the most. The bigger the ship, the bigger the fee.

This logic will be familiar to anyone who has driven a heavy truck on an American highway: an 18-wheeler pays more in road fees than a passenger car because it imposes more wear on the pavement. A scaled tonnage fee applies the same principle to maritime that we have long accepted for roads.

To those in the industry tempted to challenge the MAP because of fee structure concerns: that is not a viable strategy. The funding mechanism is coming. Our job now is to engage constructively and urgently to shape a structure that is fair, durable, and actually solves the problem. A tonnage-based vessel fee does that. It places the cost where the burden originates, scales with the ships that have driven decades of infrastructure obsolescence, and creates a long-term funding stream for the ports and waterways the American economy depends on.

Currently, the highway out of a port gets federal funding. The port itself does not. That is the absurdity we have lived with for decades. The Maritime Action Plan is our opportunity to finally correct it, if we get the implementation right.

Matthew Leech is president and CEO of Ports America, the largest marine terminal operator and stevedore in the US.

email: ceo @ portsamerica. com

24 Journal of Commerce | August 3, 2026 www. joc. com