Ocean carriers take note—the U.S. and China are about 10 weeks away from potentially reviving port docking fees on each other’s vessels that could potentially upend service deployments on the trans-Pacific trade lane.
The U.S. and China postponed the respective fees for one year after a meeting between Presidents Donald Trump and Xi Jinping last October in South Korea.
The suspension took effect on Nov. 10, 2025, with the fees set to return on Nov. 9 this year.
The Trump-Xi meeting led the U.S. to cut its punitive fentanyl-related tariffs on Chinese goods from 20 percent to 10 percent, cooling off some tensions between the two countries that had escalated in 2025 amid major shifts in U.S. trade policy under the Trump administration.
After the heads of state held another summit in Beijing, pledging to maintain stability in the countries’ tenuous trade relationship, the parties are set to convene again on Sept. 24 in Washington.
“Last year this [U.S.-levied] fee was only postponed for a year with the intention to have a new agreement in place during this period. Thus far no agreement has been seen,” said Lars Jensen, CEO of container shipping consultancy Vespucci Maritime, in a Thursday post on LinkedIn. “In this context it might be a valid assumption that if the U.S. rekindles this fee, China will simply repeat what they did last year with fees on U.S. shipping as well. The Chinese rules also applied to vessel ownership and even board composition of the owning entities.”
Last October, the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) levied fees on Chinese ships after an earlier Section 301 investigation found that China had an “unreasonable” dominance over the global maritime, logistics and shipbuilding industries.
Chinese vessel operators had to pay surcharges of $50 per net ton for every voyage that called at U.S. ports, while Chinese-built ships owned by other carriers also were charged $18 per net ton fee. China fired back with its own retaliatory fees alongside restricted port access, but scrapped its iteration of the surcharges when the truce took place in South Korea.
Since the postponement, several U.S. lawmakers have shown support to enact the fees in some capacity.
The Trump administration’s Maritime Action Plan released in February indicated the U.S. could expand the fee to all foreign-built commercial vessels docking at U.S. ports regardless of their origin country.
Four months later, Senators Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.) called on the White House to resurrect the port fees to revitalize American shipbuilding.
Under the fees established last year, Matson, the largest container line in the U.S., would have to pay a surcharge any time one of its larger vessels stops at a Chinese port (certain smaller vessels were exempt from the fees). Matson operates two expedited China-to-U.S. services: the China to Long Beach Express (CLX) and Matson Asia Express (MAX), with roughly 10 of its vessels traveling the loops.
Last October, Matson CEO Matt Cox said the ocean carrier would have to pay $80 million annually in 2026 and 2027 if the levies had not been postponed.
In the weeks after the port docking fees were briefly implemented, Matson paid $6.4 million in surcharges to China, Cox said.
However, Cox shared a positive outlook on the fees earlier this month in the company’s earnings call, suggesting Matson believes the parties will come to an agreement ahead of November.
“The U.S. and China’s governments, we think, are both interested in creating a stable trade environment, and that will persist through the end of the year and into next year,” Cox told investors. “Of course, something else may come up, but our expectation is very much the case that neither the U.S. or Chinese government want to upset the cart at this point in time.”
Aside from Matson, any potential fees would directly impact CMA CMG-owned APL’s Eagle Express 1 service and Maersk’s TP7 loop, both of which are trans-Pacific lines that dock at ports in China and on the U.S. West Coast.
The return of these fees would impact Chinese carriers that travel the trans-Pacific route including Cosco Shipping, subsidiary Orient Overseas Container Line (OOCL), China United Lines and Hede Shipping among others, all of whom had to pay fines last year.
State-owned Cosco Shipping and OOCL were the most affected by the fees. The shipping giants reportedly incurred as much as $42.8 million in fees the first week the penalties went into effect. Combined, both companies were expected to incur $2.1 billion in charges in the first year of implementation.
China United Lines was estimated to have paid one $1.3 million fee for one U.S. port call.
If the parties don’t come to an extension, other carriers still can at least partially escape the fees by reshuffling their Chinese- or U.S.-built and -owned vessels away from routes to either country or reflagging the vessels.
Ahead of last year’s November deadline, Mediterranean Shipping Company (MSC) and major container shipping alliances like the Maersk-Hapag Lloyd Gemini Cooperation and the Ocean Alliance, reworked their networks to minimize voyages of Chinese-built ships calling at American ports.
