Donald Trump’s maritime action plan seeks to resurrect US port fees
WASHINGTON : ON April 9, 2025, US President Donald Trump signed an executive order calling for the restoration of “America’s maritime dominance”. The order mandated that a Maritime Action Plan be published by November 5. It was belatedly released by the White House on Friday.
The MAP is a comprehensive blueprint covering shipyard incentives, workforce education and deregulatory actions. But the key language for ocean shipping is about a fee proposal.
The plan calls of a “universal infrastructure or security fee” on any foreign-built ships that call at US ports “to be assessed on the weight of the imported tonnage arriving on a vessel”.
The MAP offers examples of a fee of one cent per kilogram yielding around $66bn over 10 years and a fee of 25 cents per kg yielding close to $1.5tn.
“As foreign-built vessels benefit from US market access, this policy ensures they contribute to the long-term revitalisation of America’s maritime capabilities,” said the MAP.
Port fee income “could be used” for the Maritime Security Trust Fund. That fund will be created to support “investments in shipbuilding, fleet expansion, industrial base resilience and maritime workforce development”.
What matters to shipping is how high the fee per US call would be.
A penny per kg may not sound like much, but if you do the math per call, it is significant. A fee of 25 cents per kg would be cost-prohibitive — far higher than the fees on Chinese ships briefly enacted last year by the US Trade Representative.
The MAP’s focus on imports removes the threat to shipping of US exports of agribulk, containerised goods, crude, products, liquefied petroleum gas and liquefied natural gas.
However, the US has three seaborne categories of imports that would be materially affected by such a fee: containerised goods, oil and products, and vehicles.
Container shipping fees
Every boxship would pay a different fee, based on the number of loaded containers it carries and the kg per container.
One back-of-the-envelope method to assess the per-call cost is to look at total US imports measured by kg in relation to total imports measured by teu.
The US imported 209.3bn kg of containerised cargo in 2024, according to Census Bureau data. Containerised imports totalled almost 28.2m teu that year, according to Descartes.
That equates to around 7,500 kg of containerised cargo per imported teu. This could be conservative, given that the maximum payload weight of containers is three times that, but there are other published estimates that the average gross weight is around 10,000 kg per teu, with just over 2,000 kg of that being the equipment itself.
Assuming an arriving boxship is carrying 5,000 teu, and there is an average of 7,500 kg of cargo per teu, the port fee per US service string would be $375,000 or $75 per teu at one cent per kg. At 25 cents per kg, the fee would be prohibitively high: $9.4m per US service string or $1,875 per teu.
The countrywide cost for US containerised imports, based on 2024 Census Bureau data, would be $2.1bn per year at one cent per kg and $52.3bn per year at 25 cents per kg.
With last year’s USTR fees, container lines, with the exception of Cosco, were largely able to avoid the expense by shifting deployments and removing Chinese tonnage from US strings. A universal fee would offer no such escape route.
Tanker shipping fees
The proposed fee is significantly more onerous for tanker shipping than container shipping.
According to data from the Energy Information Administration, the US imported 827m barrels of crude in 2025, excluding imports from America’s largest source — Canada — which are primarily pipelined (EIA data was through November and annualised).
The US imported 632m barrels of products last year, according to EIA data. Refined products are heavily imported on the US east coast, and increasingly in California due to refinery closures.
The kg measure per barrel is different for different crude grades, based on API gravity, as well as for different refined products.
According to the Energy Institute Statistical Review of World Energy, a barrel of crude, based on worldwide average gravity, is 136 kg. A barrel of products (based on a basket of products at average API) is 124 kg.
On a back-of-the-envelope basis, this would put the cost of the universal fee at $1.9bn per year for US crude and products imports at one cent per kg, and $47.7bn per year at 25 cent per kg.
Most crude is imported to the US on aframaxes, with clean imports arriving on medium-range product tankers. These vessels were exempted due to their smaller size under the USTR port fees last year, but if the MAP port fees are truly “universal”, they wouldn’t be this time.
The Baltic Exchange US Gulf aframax index is based on a cargo size of 70,000 tonnes (70m kg), and the Baltic’s US east coast MR index is based on a cargo size of 37,000 tonnes (37m kg).
At those cargo sizes, an aframax loaded with crude would pay $700,000 per call at one cent per kg. The fee would be cost-prohibitive — $17.5m per call — at 25 cents per kg.
The standard MR would pay $370,000 per call at one cent per kg. The high end of the range is likewise too high for the voyage to occur: $9.25m per call at 25 cents per kg.
If ever enacted, universal port fees would be passed along to the oil shipper via the charter party. US importers would have to pass along the cost to consumers to maintain margins, meaning that the fee, in the case of tankers, would ultimately be paid by American drivers at the pump.
Car carrier fees
The closest precursor to the MAP’s universal fee proposal is the USTR fees that were briefly levied on vehicle carriers between October 14 and November 9, 2025. The USTR vehicle carrier fees, as in the MAP, targeted all foreign-built ships, not just Chinese tonnage.
Car carriers were charged $46 per net tonne when the USTR fees were in effect, a levy that in some cases exceeded $1m per US port call.
The average US vehicle weighed 4,371 pounds (1,983 kg) in 2024, according to the latest EPA Automotive Trends report. That would equate to an average fee of $19.83 per vehicle.
For a 6,000 ceu car carrier, the port fee would be $118,980 per call at one cent per kg or $3m per call at 25 cents per kg. For a 9,000 ceu car carrier, it would be $178,470 per call at one cent per kg and $4.5m per call at 25 cents per kg.
Car carrier companies faced difficulties passing along the USTR fee last year due to the terms of their long-term contracts with customers, but they are expected to renew contracts on terms that allow future pass-throughs.
To the extent they rewrite contracts, the universal port fee would ultimately be paid by US car buyers.
Land port maintenance tax
One of the concerns raised about USTR port fees was that they would push shippers to import cargo to Mexican and Canadian ports instead, then bring goods to the US by truck or rail.
The universal port fee would create an even greater incentive, because ocean carriers could not avert this levy by switching out tonnage as they did before.
The MAP proposes a “land port maintenance tax” for cargo that enters the US across borders from Mexico and Canada, an equivalent to the existing harbour maintenance tax. The proposed fee is 0.125% of the cargo value, as with the HMT.
“The absence of a fee comparable to the harbour maintenance tax at land ports incentivises shippers to route cargo through land borders, undermining the competitive of US maritime ports,” said the MAP.
But the land port maintenance tax only levels the playing field with the HMT, not with the proposed port fees. If carriers passed port fees along as surcharges, US importers would still have an incentive to route through Canada or Mexico — particularly if the fee turns out to be more than a penny per kg.
Feasibility of universal port fee
USTR port fees targeting China were suspended for one year as part of the US-China trade détente. The US port fees led to retaliation from China, which levied charges on US-linked vessels.
One question on the new proposal is whether a universal port fee that includes China would lead to retaliation, once again.
Another question is how the US would legally implement the fees.
Last year’s USTR levy was in response to an investigation and determination of unfair Chinese shipbuilding and maritime practices that followed an administrative procedure.
On one hand, the use of the USTR for universal fees seems implausible, because a new investigation would have to encompass South Korea and Japan, the very partners the MAP is seeking to entice into investing in US shipbuilding.
On the other hand, the USTR already did this once before, with fees on all foreign-built car carriers, which was simply tacked on as a separate annex to the existing China-related framework, despite accusations of regulatory overreach from the industry.
The other path for the universal port fees is through Congress.
“The Trump administration is compiling its own package of legislative proposals designed to strengthen the maritime industry,” said the MAP. “A whole-of-government approach, including support from Congress, is required to restore America’s dominance.”
MAP-related legislative proposals will be announced after the administration’s FY 2027 budget request is submitted. This was supposed to be submitted on February 2 but the administration has yet to do so.
If a specific universal fee level is drafted into a legislative package and more concrete expenses to US importers are calculable, the lobbyists from the energy, retail and auto sectors would swing into action with their respective allies in Congress.
Two bills have already been proposed to address America’s maritime industry shortfalls, the SHIPS Act and the Building Ships in America Act. If their lack of progress is any indication, shipping may not have to worry too much about universal port fees.
Source : Kuehne+Nagel
