Billion-Dollar US Levies on Chinese Ships Risk ‘Trade Apocalypse’
Critics will tell a hearing on Monday that the move against commercial ships could be more disruptive for global trade than Trump’s tariffs.
China now produces more than half of the world's cargo ships by tonnage, up from just 5% in 1999.
Photographer: Qilai Shen/BloombergFor a symbol of the chaos engulfing world trade since the Trump administration walked into the White House, look no further than a pile of 16,000 metric tons of steel pipes. Stevedores in Germany should be preparing to load the first batch on a ship bound for a massive energy project in Louisiana. Instead the cargo is sitting in a German warehouse after Washington proposed putting million-dollar levies on Chinese ships docking in the US.
Talks over the terms for shipping the pipes were put on hold until there’s more clarity, said Jose Severin, a business development manager for Mercury Group, the logistics provider for the deal. For that particular route across the Atlantic, 80% of the ship owner’s vessels were built in China, meaning a shipment would be subject to a surcharge of between $1 million and $3 million. Depending on how the measure is applied, that could amount to double or triple the current cost of shipping the steel pipes from Germany.