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ContainerSignal Daily: US proposes extending China port fee pause

By ContainerSignal Editorial · · 14 min read

The US Trade Representative is proposing to extend the suspension of Section 301 port fees on China-linked vessels by two months, to 9 January 2027, with the current relief due to lapse on 9 November. The notice published on 26 October says the extra time is needed to keep negotiating an end to the practices the investigation identified, and it invites comments from interested parties. The filing does not settle the investigation, so carriers and shippers get another two months of the status quo rather than a resolution.

Today’s Signals

Regulation & Policy

The proposed pause runs to 9 January 2027. The Trade Representative is proposing to modify the action taken in the Section 301 investigation into China’s targeting of the maritime, logistics and shipbuilding sectors, further suspending it for two months, according to the Federal Register notice. The comment period opened on 23 October, and The Loadstar reported that submissions are due by the end of this week. The notice offers no indication of what happens if Washington and Beijing fail to reach an agreement before the new expiry, The Loadstar reported.

The charges at stake fall on Chinese-built tonnage. As reported by The Loadstar, non-Chinese companies calling at US ports with Chinese-built vessels would face fees of US$50 per net tonne, while Chinese companies would face US$18 per net ton or US$120 per container discharged, whichever is higher. Those levels are far below the US$1 million per port call that the administration floated earlier, but they would still change the arithmetic on deploying Chinese-built ships in transpacific services. A carrier that has ordered or chartered Chinese tonnage for US-bound loops has had to price that exposure since the action was announced, and the extension keeps the exposure alive without triggering it.

The timing matters for contracting. A January expiry lands ahead of the spring round of transpacific service contract negotiations, when importers and carriers set annual terms. That keeps the fee schedule a live variable in those talks and a cost item carriers can cite. The suspension is a delay, not a repeal: the investigation and the underlying findings remain in place.

Freight Rates

The global benchmarks and the Chinese indexes moved apart this week. Drewry’s World Container Index rose 2% to US$4,585 per 40ft container in its 22 October assessment, a second consecutive weekly gain and the highest level in 15 weeks, while the Freightos Baltic Index composite showed US$3,560.20 and was reported by Container News as a 5% weekly increase from about US$3,397. The Chinese benchmarks were far quieter: the Shanghai Containerized Freight Index edged up 0.05% to 3,681.34 points on 23 October, the China Containerized Freight Index fell 2.41% to 1,876.27 points and the Ningbo Containerized Freight Index rose 0.50% to 2,509.30 points, Container News reported.

Part of the gap is methodology, and part is direction. The WCI and FBX are assessed spot benchmarks for 40ft containers, while the NYSHEX Freight Index is built from transactions involving containers that have actually shipped. That difference showed up on Asia to North Europe, where Drewry’s Shanghai to Rotterdam assessment rose 3% to US$3,632 per 40ft container while the NYFI’s Asia to North Europe reading fell 2.53% to 3,039.67, from 3,118.71. Both can be right at once: carriers are holding assessed spot levels with capacity management, while the transactions clearing in China are softer. The distinction between assessed and transacted indexes is the one the guide to container freight rate indexes sets out for the WCI, FBX and SCFI families.

Capacity management is doing the work on the assessed side. Drewry counted eight blank sailings announced for Asia-Europe next week against two this week, and two on the transpacific against six, the assessor said. It expects transpacific rates to hold and Asia-Europe rates to rise slightly, which is what withdrawing voyages is designed to deliver for a few weeks at a time. The limit is that the same instrument cannot offset the capacity returning through Suez, which is the arithmetic the market has been working through all month.

Fleet & Capacity

Double sailings have surpassed the pandemic peak. Sea-Intelligence data reported by Lloyd’s List and republished by Kuehne+Nagel put double sailings at 19% of Asia-Mediterranean departures and 17% of Asia-North Europe departures in October and November, both above the 2021 peak, Lloyd’s List reported. A double sailing happens when a ship delayed into the following week departs alongside the next scheduled vessel, so two services can leave in the same week and a gap opens in another. The consultancy attributed the pattern to vessel bunching caused by port congestion and poor schedule reliability in Asia, and said transpacific double sailings were second only to pandemic-era highs.

Golden Week did not produce the usual capacity cut. Between 2012 and 2019, average weekly capacity fell 21% on Asia-Mediterranean routes and 16% on Asia-North Europe during Golden Week compared with the third quarter. This year capacity rose 18% on Asia-Mediterranean routes and 15% on Asia-US east coast services, with Asia-North Europe and Asia-US west coast each up 4%. Blank sailings accounted for only 3% of Golden Week capacity on Asia-Mediterranean routes against a pre-pandemic average of 23%, and 5% on Asia-North Europe against 17%. Sea-Intelligence said carriers had not abandoned capacity discipline; their networks were too congested with bunched vessels for the cuts to work. That is the same mechanism that keeps schedule reliability low even when the fleet is large enough on paper.

Suez is taking back a majority of Asia-Europe capacity. About 60% of Asia-Europe container capacity is expected to transit the canal in November and December, with Asia-Mediterranean services further advanced at 70% to 80% of capacity westbound and 80% to 90% eastbound. Sea-Intelligence expects a full return in the first quarter of 2027 provided there are no further attacks on containerships. The security caveat is not theoretical: the 2,400 TEU CUL Klang, operated by CU Lines, was fired upon by an armed small craft off Yemen’s western coast on 7 October, with no crew injured, Lloyd’s List reported. The capacity arithmetic behind the half-finished Suez return assumes that risk stays contained.

Carrier Updates

Maersk raised peak season surcharges from Asia to Southern and East Africa. The surcharge takes effect on 9 November, and on 10 November for cargo originating in Vietnam, and runs until further notice, Maersk said. For South Africa and Mauritius the level is US$1,000 per 20ft and US$2,000 per 40ft across the Far East Asia origin range. From China and Hong Kong to Kenya it is US$1,000, US$2,000 and US$2,000 for 20ft, 40ft and 45ft respectively, and to Dar es Salaam US$1,200, US$2,000 and US$2,000, the separate advisory said. The charge is collected at origin unless other payment terms are agreed.

SITC posted double-digit growth in revenue and rates for the first nine months. The intra-Asia carrier reported revenue of about US$2.81 billion for the nine months to 30 September, up 14.2% from US$2.46 billion, on volumes of 2,912,117 TEU, up 5.9% from 2,749,844 TEU. Its average freight rate excluding slot exchange income rose 9.4% to US$825.90 per TEU from US$754.90, Container News reported. SITC said the operating statistics are unaudited and based on preliminary internal information. The numbers matter for the wider market because they show rates and volumes holding on intra-Asia routes while the main east-west benchmarks split.

A new Singapore-based line has started an India, Pakistan and Egypt service. Jade Pacific Line, established in April and affiliated with Ocean Silk Line and OVP Shipping, deployed the 1,100 TEU Medkon Sia on a rotation linking Mundra, Nhava Sheva, Karachi and Sokhna before returning to Mundra, Splash reported. The service began on 25 September and runs on an irregular 30 to 35 day rolling schedule rather than a fixed weekly frequency, according to Linerlytica. Ocean Silk Line holds a 30% stake in the new company. It is a small deployment, but it adds a direct link between two Indian gateways, Pakistan’s main port and the Suez Canal corridor at a time when Red Sea routings are reopening.

Ports

Dockworkers have announced coordinated action at more than 50 ports on 30 October. Unions and workers in France, Greece, Spain, Turkey, Morocco and Italy are preparing the action, with reported support from northern Europe, India, Mexico and the United States, according to a Kuehne+Nagel news alert citing Splash247. Ports named include Tangier, Marseille, Piraeus, Gioia Tauro, Genoa and Mersin. The stated aim is to prevent ports being used for arms shipments, and the level of operational disruption is expected to differ by location, with some ports facing walkouts and others demonstrations. Italy’s transport ministry has registered a nationwide 24 hour port workers’ strike for the date. Shippers with cargo at those gateways should treat the action as announced rather than confirmed in its operational detail: no port authority advisory confirming terminal closures had been verified at the time of writing.

Antwerp-Bruges recorded its best container quarter since late 2020, on empties. Container volumes rose 1.2% in TEU in the first nine months of 2026 while container tonnage fell 0.6%, and empty containers rose 11.7% in TEU as full container volumes declined 1.3%, Container News reported, citing the port’s quarterly release. Total cargo throughput reached 200.9 million tonnes, down 0.8% year on year. Container exports to the Persian Gulf fell 70% while exports to other parts of the Middle East rose almost fivefold, a shift that mirrors the disruption in Gulf container services. The port said the recovery began in August.

Hambantota is investing for a Suez recovery that may not need it. Hambantota International Port Group has committed US$149 million to container handling equipment and is targeting annual capacity of two million TEU in the first quarter of 2027, Container News reported. The port built transshipment volume while Colombo was congested and Red Sea diversions changed routing, and its management argues that a fuller return to Suez would bring Asia-Europe vessels closer to the Sri Lankan coast. The investment is a bet that transshipment demand survives the normalisation of both disruptions.

Halifax employers and the ILA reached a tentative three-year deal. The agreement was announced on Friday, a week after Montreal employers and the port workers union agreed a five-year contract following a year of arbitration, the Journal of Commerce reported. The deal is tentative and subject to ratification, and it comes as Canada’s federal government pushes port labour reforms.

What It Means

For shippers, the immediate change is a deadline that has moved rather than disappeared. The Section 301 fees stay suspended to 9 January, which removes a cost and an administrative risk from transpacific bookings through the winter peak, but the investigation remains open and the January date falls just before spring contract talks. Routing and carrier decisions that depend on the fee schedule should be treated as reversible, and any contract that allocates the charge should say who pays if the suspension lapses.

The rate picture is more divided than the headline composites suggest. Assessed spot levels are rising, helped by eight blank sailings on Asia-Europe next week, while the Chinese indexes are flat to lower and the transacted NYFI is falling on the same lane. That combination usually means carriers are defending published levels while the underlying cargo is weaker than the assessment implies. It is a recipe for a wide spread between the rate a shipper is quoted and the rate a competitor actually pays, and for surcharges doing more of the revenue work, which is what the new Maersk Africa levels show.

On capacity, the record share of double sailings is the clearest evidence that the network is still being run around congestion rather than to a schedule. Two departures in one week and none in the next rearrange capacity rather than add it, but they destroy the weekly rhythm that shippers plan around, and they make the Suez return look more orderly in the aggregate than it feels at the terminal. The 30 October port action adds a short, dated risk on top of that, concentrated in Mediterranean gateways including Genoa, Piraeus, Marseille and Tangier.

Sources

Background reading

The explainers behind today's stories, if you want the fundamentals first.

The transpacific premium is mostly a capacity decision

Asia-US East Coast spot rates are more than three times Asia-North Europe. The gap reflects blanked capacity and Red Sea routing more than a demand boom.

The Arctic container route works; the backhaul does not yet exist

Two Arctic container trials closed within days of each other. Both carried export cargo out and empties home, which is where the route's economics break.

Asia-Europe and transpacific rates rise as capacity sets records

Spot rates gained on both main headhauls in the week to 23 October, led by Asia-Europe, even as Sea-Intelligence recorded record deployed capacity.

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