If you last checked on this story when the fee was announced, or when it briefly took effect, or even when it was suspended, the story has moved since. This is one of the fastest-changing pieces of US trade policy affecting ocean freight in 2026, and getting the current status wrong is easy if you are working from a headline that is even a few months old.
The fee that never actually charged $150 a unit
In April 2025, the US Trade Representative announced Section 301 service fees on vessels connected to China, following a formal finding that China's targeting of the maritime, logistics and shipbuilding sectors burdens US commerce. The action had several parts: a fee on vessels owned or operated by Chinese entities, a separate fee on vessels built in China regardless of who owns them, and a fee specifically on foreign-built vehicle carriers, originally set at $150 per car equivalent unit of capacity.
That $150-per-unit vehicle carrier fee never actually took effect in that form. After industry comment argued the unit-based measure was easy to manipulate and, properly calculated, worked out higher than an equivalent tonnage-based charge, USTR replaced it before its effective date with a flat $46 per net ton, capped at five charges per vessel per year. Anyone still citing $150 per unit as the applicable or even the most recent version of this fee is working from a superseded number.
Twenty-seven days, then suspended
The fees, in their revised form, actually took effect on 14 October 2025. They did not stay in effect long. Following a meeting between President Trump and President Xi in Busan, South Korea on 30 October 2025 and the broader trade arrangement announced the following day, the United States suspended all of the responsive port fee actions, effective from 12:01am Eastern on 10 November 2025, for one year. China responded in kind, suspending its own reciprocal "Special Port Charges" on US-owned, operated or built vessels, which it had introduced on the same 14 October start date at a comparable rate, in the same window.
The fees have been charging $0 continuously since 10 November 2025, and remain at $0 as of this writing. A scheduled increase in the Chinese-operator fee, from $50 to $80 per net ton, that was due to take effect in April 2026, never happened because the suspension froze the whole schedule in place. If a source describes an escalating fee currently being charged, it is describing the pre-suspension schedule, not current reality.
What is actually suspended, and what resumes if nothing changes
The suspension covers the Chinese-operator fee, the Chinese-built-vessel fee, and the foreign-built vehicle carrier fee, all set to $0 through 9 November 2026. A separate, later-phased restriction on certain LNG export vessel services and a proposed tariff on Chinese-made ship-to-shore cranes sit outside this specific suspension and were not part of the reversal.
If the suspension simply lapses on 9 November 2026 with no further action, the fees resume, though which exact rate resumes for the Chinese-operator fee, the original $50 per net ton or the escalated $80 rate that had been scheduled before the freeze, is genuinely unclear from the public record. Nothing published by USTR resolves that question, which is itself a sign of how unsettled this remains.
A decision point that is days away, not months
The most important thing to know if you are reading this in real time: a Trump-Xi summit is scheduled in Washington on 24 September 2026, widely expected to be a venue for further negotiation on trade issues including this fee, alongside rare earths and export controls tied to the broader Busan trade truce. Nothing about the outcome of that meeting was public as of this writing. Whatever is decided there, or left undecided, is likely to be the next material development in this story, well before the formal 9 November expiration.
Separately, US Senators Elizabeth Warren and Mark Kelly sent USTR a letter in June 2026 pressing for the fees to be reinstated, arguing the suspension undercut the policy's intended leverage on domestic shipbuilding, and citing a reported surge in Chinese shipyard orders, including a large newbuild order placed by a major container carrier at a Chinese yard within days of the suspension being announced. No public USTR response to that letter has been found. This is a live political fight, not a settled one.
Does the February 2026 Supreme Court tariff ruling touch this at all?
No. The Supreme Court's ruling in February 2026 struck down tariffs imposed under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, on the grounds that the statute does not authorise tariffs at all. This fee rests on entirely separate authority, the Trade Act of 1974's Section 301 process, which was not before the Court and which legal commentary consistently treats as unaffected. No confirmed lawsuit specifically challenging this fee action itself has been identified, separate from general industry comments raising legal concerns during the original rulemaking.
What it would cost if reinstated
Because the live fee period was brief and the suspension has held since, no carrier appears to have actually published an ongoing surcharge line item the way a fuel or peak-season surcharge normally works. Maersk, CMA CGM and MSC each publicly stated, before the fees briefly took effect, that they did not intend to add a surcharge and would absorb or restructure around the cost instead. COSCO made no equivalent public commitment, and analysts consider it the most exposed carrier, since divesting from Chinese-built tonnage is not a realistic option for a Chinese state-owned line: one shipping consultancy estimated COSCO's potential exposure at roughly a billion dollars over six months under the original schedule, and a separate analysis put its per-container impact at roughly $2,121 per TEU on its US-bound fleet against roughly $26 per TEU for Maersk's, reflecting how differently exposed individual carriers are depending on their fleet composition.
A trade association representing agricultural exporters has separately warned that a full reinstatement could add $600 to $900 per container in pass-through cost on export routes, illustrating the impact with a projected rise in per-bushel shipping cost for US soybean and corn exports. These are projections for a scenario that is not currently in effect, not a bill anyone is paying today.
What to watch
- The outcome of the 24 September 2026 Washington summit, the nearest concrete event likely to move this story.
- Whether USTR takes any action before 9 November 2026, since a lapse with no announcement is itself a decision, reinstating the fees by default.
- Which rate resumes for the Chinese-operator fee if it does come back, given the public record does not currently resolve whether it restarts at the original level or the escalated one.
- Whether China's reciprocal suspension moves in step with the US decision, since the two have been mirrored so far.
If your supply chain touches Chinese-built or Chinese-operated tonnage, particularly on routes served predominantly by COSCO or other heavily Chinese-built fleets, this is not a story to file away as resolved. Our guide to how freight rates are calculated covers how a surcharge like this would actually reach a shipper's invoice if it returns, and our coverage of vessel sharing agreements and slot chartering explains why the same fee can affect different carriers on the same route very differently depending on whose vessel is actually deployed.
A forwarder actively tracking this kind of regulatory whiplash is worth more than one working from a headline that is already out of date. You can search more than 29,300 logistics companies by country and service in the CargoLinked directory, or post your shipment and let forwarders come to you.
This is a fast-moving regulatory story and the status described here is current only as of the date stated. Confirm the live position directly with USTR or your carrier before relying on it for a shipment decision.
