Ships Hauling Goods Hit With Fees in US-China Spat: Supply Lines

US customs authorities began collecting fees from Chinese-built and -operated merchant ships bringing goods into American ports on Tuesday, one more move in a series aimed at curbing China’s economic dominance.

The Trump administration has said the revenue collected would be used to support US shipbuilding resurgence, though there’s no mechanism in place yet for funding the industrial policy. The plan had become one of several points of contention in the US-China trade war, and at the end of last week Beijing announced its own retaliatory proposal to charge vessels with more than 25% US-ownership or control a hefty fee upon entry to Chinese ...