The News
The Office of the US Trade Representative is proposing to keep its Section 301 port fees on China-linked ships suspended for two more months, through Jan 9, 2027, according to a notice in the Federal Register. The current one-year pause ends Nov 9.
“The United States is continuing to engage with China with the goal of obtaining the elimination of the acts, policies, and practices at issue in the investigation,” USTR said in the notice.
The extension would cover the fees on Chinese owners and operators, on Chinese-built ships and on foreign-built vehicle carriers. It would also keep paused the 100% tariffs on certain Chinese ship-to-shore cranes and cargo handling equipment.
The details
The new end date falls a day before the US-China trade truce expires, a deadline the two governments have already pushed back once. The fee pause did not move with it automatically, so USTR needed a notice of its own.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said in September that the Busan truce would run two months past its Nov 10 expiry, to Jan 10, FreightWaves reported. At the time, the port fees were still set to return Nov 10.
China suspended its own special port fees on US-linked vessels on the same one-year timetable, and they could come back alongside the US fees, according to the same report.
The fees were live for less than a month before the first pause. They took effect Oct 14, 2025, and USTR suspended them from Nov 10 for a year after the Trump-Xi deal announced Nov 1, law firm Holland & Knight noted.
Under USTR’s April 2025 schedule, Chinese owners and operators pay $50 per net ton per US voyage, rising $30 each April to $140 in 2028, according to White & Case.
Operators of Chinese-built ships pay the higher of $18 per net ton or $120 per container discharged, rising to $33 and $250 by 2028. Both fees are capped at five charges per vessel per year.
The notices do not say whether a restart would use the 2025 rates or the higher April 2026 step, logistics software firm Tradlinx wrote in August.
Maersk, Hapag-Lloyd, CMA CGM, Evergreen, ONE and HMM all said in 2025 that they would not add a surcharge for the fees. Seaspan, the largest independent containership owner, changed flags instead.
Maersk told customers in September 2025 that it had “no intention to introduce any surcharge in connection with this rule,” FreightWaves reported. Hapag-Lloyd and Evergreen said the same, according to the same report.
CMA CGM said in October 2025 that it “does not plan to implement a surcharge at this time” for the fees “as currently structured,” ICIS reported. ONE and HMM also ruled out extra charges. COSCO said only that it would “maintain competitive rates and surcharges.”
Seaspan moved its headquarters from Hong Kong to Singapore and planned to reflag about 100 vessels to the Singapore flag, ICIS reported.
What’s next
Comments close at 5 p.m. ET on Oct 30 under docket USTR-2026-0694. If USTR adopts the change, the pause runs from Nov 10 through 11:59 p.m. ET on Jan 9, and the notice does not say what happens after that.
