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Ocean carriers have announced that to reduce the fees they will skip the smaller ports like Seattle, Oakland, Boston, Mobile, Baltimore, New Orleans, etc.
Some carriers have said they'll just move the capacity serving the U.S. to other trade lanes altogether. /2
This would be horrible for jobs in and around those ports, and really bad for companies, both importers and exporters, using those ports. Huge extra costs will be incurred as trucks and trains run hundreds of extra miles to the main ports on each cost. 3/
Similarly the major ports (LA, Long Beach, Houston, and New York) will be unable to keep up with the flood of extra volumes and are likely to become congested, similar to what we saw during Covid. 4/
The craziest part of the original proposal is a requirement that within 7 years 15% of U.S. exports must travel on a ship that's made in America and crewed by Americans. 5/
There are only 23 of American made and crewed container ships in the world today, and they all service domestic ocean freight (Alaska, Hawaii, Guam, Puerto Rico, etc). They're all tiny compared to today's mega ships, and they're not even sailing to overseas ports. 6/
The U.S. did not produce any container ships in 2024. And the number we produce in any given year rounds to zero. The reason is that American made container ships of 3,000 TEUs cost the same price as the modern container ships from China of 24,000 TEUs. 7/
One shipyard in China made more commercial ships last year than the total number the U.S. has produced since World War Two. 8/
During East Asia's successful industrialization, their government's required the manufacturing sectors to produce goods for export, it wasn't enough just to produce for their domestic markets. 9/
This was how they could prove that they were actually building globally competitive companies and products. If nobody wanted to import their goods, they knew that they weren't actually building successful companies. 10/
As the Trump Administration pursues the noble goal of re-industrializing the United States, passing a pass a rule simultaneously that limits U.S. exports as a function of American made ships—ships that today that will hamstring exporters would be a true self-own. 11/
Given what just happened with the new tariffs tanking global equities markets, it would be crazy for the USTR to go through with this rule. If we want the U.S. to be competitive in global manufacturing, we need world-class port infrastructure and logistics connectivity. /12
In the meantime, U.S. manufacturers who have just had massive new tariffs placed on components and machinery sourced from abroad should brace themselves for impact because all indications are that this rule is coming on April 17th. /end
Promoting US ship building is a good idea. Just crippling our economy to do it is not.
If they are carrying cargo worth 150M USD (which isn’t a significant amount if there are 10,000 TEU containers), your talking about a 1% surcharge, probably not paid by the shipping line, but the cargo owners and the cost will likely be past on to the consumer. If that causes
Here’s what could get more expensive with Trump’s new tariffs.
Ryan hear me out, we leap frog ships.
Just as cell towers made ground cabling dominance obsolete, we could subsidize spaceX allowing initial cold start of operational capability.
Weight wise super heavy Starship could take 3-4 40-foot containers
You are the only source I see for this info. Of course your insights are 
for my understanding.
for my understanding.![: A container ship sails beneath the Golden Gate Bridge as it makes its way into port in San Francisco, California, January 26, 2009. REUTERS/Robert Galbraith//File Photo](data:image/svg+xml,<svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" width="1200" height="628"><rect fill-opacity="0"/></svg>)
Ryan already know's this, I'm sure, but we've tried to fix the US' ship building productivity a few different times since WW2, and it's never worked. covered this in 's excellent newsletter last year. We should call a spade a spade, this is stupid policy
I wonder how this affects Maersk (MLL)? I don't completely understand how it works but I thought that the reason why the US uses MLL is because we don't have shipping capacity that satisfies Jones Act so MLL became US-flagged as interim solution even tho foreign owned and built.
I lived in China for seven years to startup and operate a company. I spent over $1,000,000 building out a factory, training. I needed to avoid IP theft and bad quality. Now others manufacture through us. DM me if you need help.
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China can retaliate e.g. charge a fee for every Boeing airplane landing in a Chinese airport
Would it help if we charged a monthly permit fee, rather than a per-port fee? Once the ship hits a port and pays the fee, they are good to go at every port for 30 days. (Or maybe it is 60 or 90 days, as an alternative example)
Well, as import/export volume collapses, maybe that'll counteract the expected drop in shipping rates.
These people really want to tank the economy, don't they?
I don’t think we have the skills & labor at the scale required to build ships of the size thats needed. This will take years - the shipbuilding yards and the infrastructure needed will need to be heavily subsidized to make this competitive for shipping companies.
The constant condemnation against China is tiring. Why the competition and threats. Americans wanted more and more, the U.S. gave it to them. Now the U.S. wants to take it all away. China is ahead of the U.S. in many things. When some are embarrassed, they get mean.
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Like the tariffs, it’s a shot across the bow to get these nations to negotiate.
Per port call? That's crazy. Everything will be unloaded at a big hub and trucked, my gosh 
I’m just lost for words and trying to figure out if I’m playing checkers and they’re playing chess
I understand your point here, but I’ve come away convinced that this is more urgent than I even thought. Clearly it’s extremely dangerous for national security to not have a domestic ship production base.
The CEO of the world’s largest ocean carrier, MSC, told CNBC the fines would have “very, very significant” consequences for how the maritime industry serves the U.S., reaching up to $20 billion annually....
I talk a big game about saving ecom clients on shipping rates.
Well, I've saved:
• $50M between clients in 2 years
• $200k in 4 hours
• Dozens of clients 10-50% (for a decade now!)
Want to learn how? Follow me
Business interests, from U.S. farmers to global ocean carriers, are warning of severe economic damage from proposals being considered by the U.S. government to hit container ships made in China with steep fines when they call on U.S. ports...
It reminds me of how the communists kept trying to force everyone to become farmers. It's the same thing. Force and drastic change this fast will be as bad as that was.
I would like to see this new measure really put into place now, can't wait to see the level of chaos this policy will bring.
This is depressing, we don’t make anything any
more. Unfortunately you can’t fix this overnight, it was decades in the making.
I helped Ecom businesses save $50M+ in shipping fees in last 24 months.
Here's how I saved $200,000 in just 4 hours:
This is painful because we let it get this far. Because in the 1970s+ we took a shortsighted view that we could pay other countries to make all of our stuff, including ships, even if those countries are not allies. We gave manufacturing capability away so we could have more
Excellent move by the U.S. and long overdue. I look forward to the day that zero ships made in China make port here and zero Chinese-made goods are shipped here.
Stop making sense.
Boy I'm here to watch this whole thing explode in Trump's face.
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The United States has the world’s most navigable waterways but we ship most items by rail and trucks. If we want to see meaningful improvements we should repeal the Jones Act.
This policy has been in the works for several years and was drafted by the Biden Administration. Increasing US built and operated merchant shipping is a national security goal.
Amazingly, a business owner known for cutting corners, breaking deals, exploiting loopholes, and finding workarounds for his companies his entire career somehow believes that other businesses/countries won't use the same tools and tactics to circumvent his rules, fees, tariffs,
Do you have only brain dead people in government positions?
Hey , based on this thread, you might be onto something, unless of course this is all part of the 6D chess strategy
is playing.
Either way, it'll be interesting to watch how this unfolds!
Perhaps these carriers could get a pass if the commit to cancelling all future orders for Chinese ships and invest in US shipbuilding with massive pre-orders to replace Chinese ships over the next decade.
USVI here. This is insane for us. The ships bring everything the islands need from Jacksonville, FL. Often US produce, it just happens to be a 30 year old ship that was built in China. A gallon of milk already is 9$ here
Hey Ryan, do you have a source specifically for the April 17th deadline? I work in ocean imports and we have been following this closely since February. I haven’t seen the finished proposal since after the March hearing, and I need to show this to my team ASAP if USTR has updates
Now you just need the 6.5m unemployed minus the immigrants you’re deporting to manufacture $4,100,000,000,000 of goods per annum
Godspeed
Already Very large Container Ships are avoiding US Ports because of the infrastructure.
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In this episode, Sal Mercogliano - maritime historian discuss reason why no Ultra Large Container Vessels are sailing to US
#trade #shipping #supplychain #containerships #TEU #Transportation #ports #infrastructure #Neopanamax #LCV #ULCV #economy #Houthis
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For a small country like Bermuda that only has Chinese made ships. (3) who only call on US ports only buy from US vendors it will cost 1.5M every time our small ships call on a US port once a week. That means our containers will now cost 10k each. Haven't paid for the goods yet!
So more jobs building ships, instead of servicing the supply chains for now. Easy.
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Dumb question: Typical ship has ~15 kTEU, right? So isn't that "just" 33-99 $/TEU, or just a 1-3% on a typical trans-pacific shipment, no?
That seems much less significant than the tariffs?
What a great opportunity for Canada to expand ours ports, getting ready to broaden our markets beyond one customer.
Wow! Well written and informative thread. This plan could put a real dent in the US consumer economy.
I think all these announcements are being made to increase GenAI usage. You need those models to keep abreast of all the changes happening on a daily basis.
The US doesn't have enough bottoms to serve itself, and won't afford (because of cheapness) to hire deep-sea all-US crews.
Of course, ships can simply go elsewhere. Vancouver can greatly develop more container capacity and tie in to railways for delivery.
Im no expert but I think that the extra cost will be payed by the US consumer ? The owner of the ship just raise the price pr shipment ! So the price will go up in the US.
Feels like preparation for a major conflict in the near term, for which it’s crucial to massively ramp up ship-building capabilities
The US doesn’t have the muscle to go into a trade war with China. This will end badly for the US with the rest of the world paying a price for that lesson …
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2005, NE China, I was taken on a tour of a naval dockyard where they were proud of building 6 submarines for the US. The GOP were screaming about China stealing its military technology while at the same time handing it over because it was cheaper.
that should stop a lot of ships from visiting the US.
…….and the economic / social consequences are……..?
That’s the thing about Trump, he throws a fee out there and doesn’t think the domino effect through.
