The proposed imposition of US port fees on Chinese-built and Chinese-operated ships could dramatically impact US chemical exports and result in China being the biggest beneficiary, panelists said.
The potential fees would result in the cost of a smaller vessel, currently paying a port fee of around $20,000, soaring to about $500,000, said Udo Lange, CEO of chemical tanker operator Stolt-Nielsen, in a panel session focused on supply chain issues on March 18. For larger ships, the current fee of around $40,000 would soar to between $1.5 million and $3.0 million, he said.
"If you pay these fees, they will lead to a 30% increase on certain chemicals in deep sea, and on the shorter routes [with] the smaller ships, it's around a 70% increase. So the outcome of that is, of course, that US exports are not competitive anymore and China, funnily enough, would be the winner of this," Lange said.
The US Trade Representative has proposed charging $1 million per instance for vessel operators from China to enter a US port. Fleets with Chinese-built vessels would be charged up to $1.5 million per entrance based on the percentage of such vessels in the fleet. The USTR said the rule would boost shipbuilding efforts in the US and reduce dependence on China's fast-growing commercial fleet. China owned over 19% of the world's commercial fleet as of January 2024, the USTR said.
Fellow WPC panelist Gina Fyffe, CEO of trader Integra Petrochemicals, said, "one of the big losers in this if the port tax comes in will be almost certainly the US, and that will happen quite quickly." Looking at the global chemical tanker and gas tanker fleet, Fyffe noted that a "large percentage of the gas fleet was built in China." As a result, tariffs imposed would result in "no ethane, no LPG, no ethylene. So who's that hurting?" she said.
Lange noted that the chemical industry is the second largest manufacturing industry in the US and that the port fees would impact 25% of US GDP overall. US chemical exports are valued at around $160 billion, he said.
The stainless steel tanker fleet of 850 vessels represents about 1% of the global fleet, which consists of about 20,000 ships in total, he said.
"The risk on the other side is massive," he said. "You affect 25% of GDP. And building chemical tankers is more complicated than containerships. So building an industry would probably take around a decade."
