It’s Complicated!

March 28th, 2025: Targeting Chinese vessels could be costly for the U.S. A few weeks ago, the Trump administration announced a set of proposed actions to address China’s “dominance in the global maritime, logistics and shipbuilding sectors”. These proposed actions include imposing significant port fees on Chinese owners/operators as well as other operators who have Chinese built vessels in their fleet or on order. They also mandate the use of U.S.-flagged and U.S.-built vessels for a fixed percentage of U.S. exports. We first wrote about the potential implications of these proposed actions on the tanker market in our Tanker Opinion of February 28th (“Chinese Shipping In The Crosshairs”). Our preliminary conclusion was that if these proposed actions would be implemented as-is, it would make Chinese owners/operators and vessels instantly uncompetitive in the U.S. import and export markets. Since then, more people have given their opinion on this proposed action. In today’s Tanker Opinion we will go into more detail about the implications and consequences (intended and unintended) of the proposals of the Office of the United States Trade Representative (“USTR”). Please fill in below form to continue read.