The clock is ticking on the suspension of reciprocal port fees imposed by the United States and China with the charges possibly coming back in just over 10 weeks.
On 14 October 2025 the US Trade Representative (USTR) levied fees on Chinese-owned, Chinese-operated, and Chinese-built vessels arriving at US ports. China countered with tariffs on US-flagged and US-built vessels, and vessels operated by companies with at least 25% US national ownership. Beijing announced the measures with only a few days’ notice, leaving many shipping companies scrambling to adjust.
The two countries agreed to a one-year pause on respective charges following a late-October meeting between U.S. President Donald Trump and Chinese Premier Xi Jinping. The suspension officially went into effect on November 10, 2025.
If no new agreement is reached, the fees could therefore be reinstated on 9 November this year – only about 10 weeks and three days from the time of publication.
“The initial suspension was meant to allow both sides to negotiate a longer-term agreement,” Lars Jensen, CEO of Verspucci Maritime wrote on LinkedIn.
“This fee was delayed a year last year with the plan being that a new agreement would be in place during that time. “We haven’t seen any agreement yet,” Jensen said.
If Washington brought back its fees, he said, China would almost certainly retaliate by bringing back its own charges on US shipping.
Tensions between Washington and Beijing are simmering, and a deadline is looming. While the US has imposed secondary sanctions on Iran, China remains Iran’s biggest trading partner and buyer of its crude oil exports. A lot of that oil is thought to be transhipped ship-to-ship in Southeast Asia, especially around the Malaysia Eastern Outer Port Limits (EOPL) anchorage.
Chinese banks could also be hit with sanctions if they are used to facilitate transactions related to Iranian oil, US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessant said on Monday.
“If they enable transactions and are part of the ecosystem that takes Iranian oil and converts it into money, into oppression, they will be targeted,” Bessant said.
The latest escalation comes ahead of an expected summit between Trump and Xi in the United States in late September, though an exact date has not yet been confirmed.
If no agreement is reached by November 9, shipowners will have to review their fleets and trading patterns again. Vessel routing decisions could be particularly important, with operators needing to consider where ships were built, who owns them and who operates them to avoid potentially multimillion-dollar charges when calling at US or Chinese ports.
The effect would be especially important for a number of carriers operating in the Transpacific trade.
Chinese and Hong Kong-based carriers such as Cosco Shipping, OOCL and Hede Shipping, and US operator Matson Shipping would have fairly limited options to avoid the fees because of their ownership structures, Jensen said.
The financial exposure could be large. Jensen said Cosco and OOCL alone would have been hit for about $1.5 billion for the full year if the USTR fees had been in place for all of 2026.
Other large container carriers could also be impacted.
CMA CGM would be exposed through its US-flag subsidiary APL Eagle Express 1 service and Maersk through its TP7 service that is composed of US-flagged vessels. Other carriers may be forced to shuffle ships between services, as several did before the original deadline of October 14 last year.
Even in the suspension period the potential return of the fees has already affected corporate decision making in the shipping sector.
One of the biggest movers has been Seaspan Corporation, which relocated its headquarters from Hong Kong to Singapore and reflagged a large portion of its fleet with the Singapore Registry of Ships.
Pacific Basin Shipping, a dry bulk owner, also reflagged much of its fleet to Singapore. The company’s website says its global leadership team has moved from Hong Kong to the Lion City, Singapore.
As the November deadline looms and no replacement agreement is in sight, shipping companies are once again considering having to reorganize fleets, services and routing strategies to limit exposure to the US-China port charges.
