Container Shipping Quarterly
Special Report
But industry pushback spurred the USTR to reduce the severity of the fees awaiting container lines not tied directly to China. The revised Section 301 remedy called for levying the fee once per vessel voyage, rather than per port call, and removed language that would have penalized carriers for deploying Chinese-built ships in non-US trades. For most global container lines, including Maersk, Mediterranean Shipping Co.( MSC), CMA CGM, Ocean Network Express( ONE) and Hapag-Lloyd, the next steps were obvious: remove ships built in China from US services and replace them. Others such as Evergreen had no such ships deployed in the US trades to begin with.
By the beginning of October, the major carriers had removed most of the 566,000 TEUs of Chinese-built ship capacity that was in rotation to the US as recently as mid-September, according to rate benchmarking and analytics firm Xeneta.
In the crosshairs
Cosco and OOCL, meanwhile, can’ t simply swap out their Chinese-built ships to avoid the new fees. Because they are Chinese entities, the USTR tariff will penalize them regardless of where their vessels were built, and at five times the rate of their peers. The duo faces a $ 50-per-net-ton fee for any of their vessels on their first port call to the US, and that amount rises every year until it hits $ 140 in 2029.
Unless they change their networks, the duo, which handles the largest share of containerized US imports from Asia, faces a more than $ 2 billion hit in the first year, according to a new report from investment bank HSBC.
Although it said the USTR fees will be“ negligible for non-Chinese lines,” HSBC estimated Cosco could face $ 1.5 billion in port fees in 2026, equivalent to about $ 600 per US-bound container. The fee represents about 5 % of the carrier’ s expected revenue during the period, the report said.
OOCL could be stuck with a $ 654 million tab, which would account for about 7 % of estimated revenue during 2026, HSBC said, adding that the cost of the port fees could result in a two-thirds decline in operating earnings for 2026.
In a Sept. 16 customer advisory, Cosco acknowledged that the new fees“ may pose certain operational challenges,” but said it will“ continue to serve the US market” and does not plan to remove any trans-Pacific services, reduce the number of ships in its US services or impose new surcharges.
The largest contributors of trans-Pacific capacity, Cosco and OOCL won accolades from some US importer customers during the COVID-19 pandemic for their ability to deliver contracted space despite record volume and historic US port congestion. Cosco in January had to assure customers that being placed on a list of companies the US Department of Defense deemed to have military ties to China, thus shutting them out of government contracts, also would have no impact on its services.
The Chinese government is widely expected to absorb the new port fees through subsidies. The USTR investigation cited estimates that China provided some $ 3.4 billion in subsidies between 2010 and 2018 to the country’ s major carriers and port operators.
Cosco’ s last annual report listed $ 169 million in subsidies received during 2024, down from $ 423 million in 2023. However, those subsidies do not extend to OOCL.
Cosco and OOCL could rely on their Ocean Alliance partners to reduce the number of ships they deploy on the trans-Pacific. Evergreen Line has only four Chinesebuilt ships in its fleet, and CMA CGM is reducing its Chinese-built capacity on US trades, which was roughly 42,000 TEUs in mid-September, according to Xeneta.
“ The CMA CGM and Evergreen fleets will be powerful tools for the Ocean Alliance in navigating these hurdles and minimizing associated costs,” Peter Sand, Xeneta’ s chief analyst, told the Journal of Commerce.
MSC, which also told shippers it’ s prepared for the new US port fees, has dropped some 19,000 TEUs of Chinese-built vessels from its US services. ONE, which had nearly one-third of its post Panamax ship fleet built in China, now has only one small Chinese-built ship deployed to the US, while its Premier Alliance partners Yang Ming and HMM have negligible exposure to Chinese ships.
Limited long-term impact
Despite Washington’ s stated goal of breaking China’ s maritime dominance, the country’ s shipbuilders also appear poised to survive.
The potential that any type of Chinese-built ship calling a US port would face a fee was a factor in a downturn of orders at Chinese shipbuilders this year, according to an August report from S & P Global Ratings, a sister product of the Journal of Commerce within S & P Global.
12 Journal of Commerce | October 6, 2025 www. joc. com