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HONG KONG: China has hit US-owned vessels docking in the country with tit-for-tat port fees, in response to the American government’s planned port fees on Chinese ships, expanding a string of retaliatory measures before trade talks between US President Donald Trump and Chinese leader Xi Jinping.
Vessels owned or operated by American companies or individuals, and ships built in the US or flying the American flag, would be subjected to a 400 yuan ($56) per net ton fee per voyage if they dock in China, China’s Ministry of Transport said on Friday.
The fees would be applied on the same ship for a maximum of five voyages each year, and would rise every year until 2028, when it would hike to 1,120 yuan ($157) per net ton, the ministry said.
They would take effect on Oct. 14, the same day when the United States is due to start imposing port fees on Chinese vessels.
China’s Ministry of Transport said on Friday in a statement that its special fees on American vessels are “countermeasures” in response to “wrongful” US practices, referring to the planned US port fees on Chinese vessels.
The ministry also slammed the United States’ port fees as “discriminatory” that would “severely damage the legitimate interests of China’s shipping industry” and “seriously undermine” international economic and trade order.
China has announced a string of trade measures and restrictions before an expected meeting between Trump and Xi on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum in South Korea that begins at the end of October. On Thursday, Beijing unveiled new curbs on exports of rare earths and related technologies, as well as new restrictions on the export of some lithium battery and related production equipment.
The port fees announced by Beijing on Friday mirrors many aspects of the US port fees on Chinese ships docking in American ports. Under Washington’s plans, Chinese-owned or -operated ships will be charged $50 per net ton for each voyage to the US, which would then rise by $30 per net ton each year until 2028. Each vessel would be charged no more than five times per year.
China’s new port fee is “not just a symbolic move,” said Kun Cao, deputy chief executive at consulting firm Reddal. “It explicitly targets any ship with meaningful US links — ownership, operation, flag, or build — and scales steeply with ship size.”
The “real bite is on US-owned and operated vessels,” he said, adding that North America accounts for roughly 5 percent of the world fleet by beneficial ownership, which is still a meaningful figure although not as huge as compared to Greek, Chinese and Japanese ship owners.
However, the United States has only about 0.1 percent of global commercial shipbuilding market share in recent years and built fewer than 10 commercial ships last year, Reddal added.
While shipping analysts have said that the US port fees on Chinese vessels would likely have limited impact on trade and freight rates as some shipping companies have been redeploying their fleets to avoid the extra charge, shipping data provider Alphaliner warned last month in a report that the US port fees could still cost up to $3.2 billion next year for the world’s top 10 carriers.

PARIS: President Emmanuel Macron will convene a meeting of France’s mainstream political parties on Friday ahead of a self-imposed deadline to name a new prime minister, as the country’s central bank chief warned political turmoil was sapping economic growth.
Macron, 47, is searching for his sixth prime minister in under two years and will need to find a figure whose appeal spans the center-right to center-left in order to steer the budget for 2026 through a fragmented and fractious parliament.
Ahead of the meeting, the president’s Elysee office said the gathering needed to be a “moment of collective responsibility,” which political pundits quickly interpreted as a signal that Macron could call snap elections if no consensus candidate was found.

MACRON SETS FRIDAY EVENING DEADLINE TO NAME PM
Macron has set himself a deadline of Friday evening to name a new premier.
The daily Le Parisien newspaper reported that Macron intended to reappoint Sebastien Lecornu, who resigned as prime minister on Monday after just 27 days in the post, and that the president did not rule out a snap vote if other party leaders reject the proposal.
The Elysee did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Other names that have been floated in political circles include veteran centrist Jean-Louis Borloo, the head of the public auditor Pierre Moscovici, and Nicolas Revel, a technocrat who leads the Paris hospitals administration.

BUDGET WRANGLING HAS EXACERBATED POLITICAL CRISIS
Reappointing Lecornu would risk alienating the political leaders whose backing Macron needs to form a broad-based government that can get a budget over the line.
Wrangling over a budget that can both rein in the country’s deficit while meeting the conflicting demands of both the left and conservatives has been going on for weeks, with Socialist demands for a repeal of a 2023 pensions reform and for heavier taxation of the rich proving big stumbling blocks.
“People tell me: ‘He’s going to test the Lecornu 2 hypothesis on you.’ If that’s the case, I wish him good luck,” Green party chief Marine Tondelier told TF1 television.
Gabriel Attal, a former Macron prime minister and head of the president’s Renaissance party, cautioned the president against unilaterally naming the next premier without wider support.
“I fear that trying the same method ... of naming a prime minister before there has been a compromise will produce the same effects,” Attal said in an interview with France 2 television.
The meeting, due to take place from 1230 GMT, is excluding the far-right National Rally (RN) and hard-left France Unbowed (LFI) — two of the largest political parties in the National Assembly.
“The RN is honored not to have been invited. We are not for sale to those around Macron,” RN party chairman Bardella wrote on X.

SNAP ELECTION WOULD POSE RISKS FOR MAINSTREAM PARTIES
France’s mainstream parties are keen to avoid a snap parliamentary election. Opinion polls forecast the RN would be the main beneficiary and that another hung parliament dominated by three ideologically opposed blocs would be the most likely result.
The crisis is the deepest that France, the euro zone’s second-largest economy, has seen for decades. The turmoil was precipitated in part by the president’s failed gamble on a snap election last year that further weakened his minority in parliament.
The central bank chief, Francois Villeroy de Galhau, forecast the political uncertainty would cost the economy 0.2 percentage points of gross domestic product. Business sentiment was suffering but the economy was broadly fine, he said.
“Uncertainty is ... the number one enemy of growth,” Villeroy told RTL radio.
Villeroy said it would be preferable if the deficit did not exceed 4.8 percent of GDP in 2026. The deficit is forecast to hit 5.4 percent this year, nearly double the European Union’s cap.
Macron’s second-to-last prime minister, Francois Bayrou, was ousted by the National Assembly over his plans for 44 billion euros in savings to bring the deficit down to 4.6 percent.
Rating agencies issued a fresh round of warnings about France’s sovereign credit score this week after Lecornu said on Monday his government was resigning, just 14 hours after he had announced his cabinet line-up.