IN WHAT APPEARS to be further evidence of the US Trade Representative office’s scant knowledge of its own maritime trades, Chinese-built and/operated PCTCs and ro-ros will no longer be singled out for punitive port call charges in US ports – all such vessels will be.
Applicable from October this year, the fees will be assessed on any foreign-built vehicle carrier based on its Car Equivalent Unit (CEU) capacity. The fee will be set at US$0 for 180 days, and will then be set at $150 per CEU capacity of the entering non-U.S. built vessel.
“An operator could receive a fee remission for up to three years if it orders and takes delivery of a U.S.-built vessel of equivalent or greater capacity within that time period,” USTR announced late last week. “A vessel operator will be eligible for a fee remission for three years if it orders and takes delivery of a U.S.-built vessel of at least equivalent size.”
Of somewhere over 850 PCTCs in service today, the US has built just one – in 2005, the 2500 CEU Jean Anne, which operates exclusively in the US West Coast-Hawaii trade for the San Francisco-based Pasha Group. Both Pasha and Matson own and operate container/car hybrids but that’s the extent of the US involvement, notwithstanding it is the world’s second largest importer.
Höegh Autoliners and Wallenius Wilhelmsen, the former through a joint venture with Wilmington Trust and the latter via American Ro-Ro Carriers, have tonnage operating under the US flag and on charter to the Military Sealift Command and Dept of Defense. None of this tonnage is US built, nor currently could it be given its size in the 6000+ CEU range.
Meanwhile, the latest USTR proposal calls for all LNG carriers that export US natural gas to be both US-built and US-flagged.
Needless to add, there has never been a modern LNG carrier built in a US yard. However, this proposal may have some prospect given that South Korean builder Hanwha Ocean acquired the Philly Shipyard last year. Meeting market price expectations is likely to be a whole other matter.
