Proposed tariffs up to 100% on Chinese cranes could significantly raise port upgrade costs.
An Appeal for Tariff Delays
In a move that will likely fall on deaf ears, U.S. Ports Appeal for Delay to Tariffs on Chinese Cranes
The administration is proposing tariffs of up to 100% on Chinese-made cranes and other cargo-handling equipment as part of broader efforts to counter China’s dominance of the maritime industry. Shipping industry officials say the fees would be stacked on top of 25% tariffs on Chinese-made cranes introduced under the Biden administration, and in addition to China duties being considered by Trump’s trade team.
Ports and the private companies that operate marine terminals say the fees would penalize cargo gateways that ordered cranes long before the tariffs were being considered, and don’t account for the scarcity of cranes made outside of China.
China’s Shanghai Zhenhua Heavy Industries, known as ZPMC, accounts for nearly 80% of ship-to-shore cranes at U.S. ports, dwarfing competitors such as Finland’s Konecranes and Germany’s Liebherr.
Carl Bentzel, president of the National Association of Waterfront Employers, said he has visited the White House several times to urge senior administration officials to give ports more time to find alternative sources for cranes.
“They said, ‘We’re going to put penalties as high as necessary to ensure you don’t buy equipment from China,’” Bentzel said. “But we need some level of transition.”
China produces more than 70% of the world’s ship-to-shore cranes, according to the U.S. government. Chinese cranes are popular because they are plentiful and cheap. Shipping industry officials say the average cost of a Chinese ship-to-shore crane is about $15 million, several million dollars less than the lowest-price competitors. They say there are no domestic alternatives and that smaller overseas manufacturers wouldn’t be able to meet demand if U.S. ports pivoted to manufacturers outside of China.
Charlie Jenkins, chief executive of the Port of Houston, testified at a USTR office hearing earlier this year that, based on discussions with crane makers, it would take about a decade to develop sufficient crane manufacturing capacity in the U.S. Jenkins said that over the next six years his port needs to order 22 cranes with a potential tariff liability of $100 million.
It can take up to two years to fulfill a crane order. Port operators are asking the administration to provide tariff exemptions for cranes ordered before the end of 2024. They are also asking the USTR’s office to delay imposing levies on new crane orders for three years to give time for crane manufacturing to develop in the U.S., or for manufacturers in allied countries to expand production.
The USTR’s office decided earlier this year that starting in mid-October the U.S. will impose fees on owners and operators of Chinese-built ships that call at U.S. ports.
The trade representative’s office is also considering imposing fees on foreign-built car-carriers that call at U.S. ports. The proposal is opposed by ocean-shipping trade groups. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce warns the fees could reduce vehicle availability and add $300 to car prices.
Proven Immunity
Trump has proven immunity to common sense and understanding intelligent economic arguments.
And he is stupid enough to believe that China will pay these tariffs.
So it’s hard see how these port pleas are going anywhere.
Related Posts
July 9, 2025: Trump Slaps Brazil With a 50 Percent Tariff Over Treatment of Political Ally
The tariff Bizarro World gets more bizarre.
July 10, 2025: Letters Show Trump Sticks With Ridiculous Definition of Reciprocal Tariffs
Let’s review Trump’s definition of reciprocal tariffs and his new announcements.
July 10, 2025: Canada Adds 70 Percent More Port Capacity to China to Escape Trump’s Tariffs
Credit Trump for pushing Canada closer to China.
And China gets more crane orders from Canada too.
The cranes can go to Canada!
Canada believes in fair and free trade. Their nation is embarking on an ambitious and economically beneficial modernization effort to replace the US as a trading partner.
Canada can supply the world with LNG, crude oil, forest products, copper, refined gasoline, wheat, corn, soybeans. blueberries, apples, cherries, fish, beef, pork, poultry… You get the idea.
Since they only have one enemy threatening them, (The US) they can start working on closing that border.
Right after Mexico pays for ours! LMAO!
Trump is a failure at soooooooo many things!
Trump is determined to stop all trade and isolate America. He wants to turn our nation into a third world backwater where children are no longer protected from disease with modern vaccines and contract polio and the pox.
This epic interference in free markets marks the deliberate destruction of trading relationships developed over centuries. Destruction is easy. Building relationships is far more difficult.
I will not invest a dime in infrastructure with costs and availability of materials and labor being so unstable.
Hyperbole TDS alert, everyone!
Take a few Xanex & stop drinking so much liberal Socialist Kool-Aid, Frosty.
Hi Ben,
Here is a report from the heart of American crop production,
Corn prices have fallen another percent yesterday and 28.25 cents or 6.5% in the last month as our grain shipments are being rejected on a global basis. They have to be heavily discounted and our farmers are paying the price for trumps folly!
As a farmer I know what it is like to have trump kill our exports (he did it last term) and have to subsidize farms that would go out of business.
I was smart enough to not invest in seed, fertilizer and the equipment and labor it takes to produce corn and soy. My farm is building its soil and there are a variety of high margin products being produced on smaller footprints.
It is better to work smarter and harder than to be in the situation my Trump voting neighbors are in.
Yet I feel for them for being taken in: Again!
>
The US has cooked its own goose. Giving away trillions of dollars for consumption trinkets. The inevitable result of deficit spending, covered by foreigners who come back and buy our capital.
A trade deficit doesn’t merely mean that a nation is importing more than it’s exporting.
The United States has been exchanging nearly $1 trillion of its national worth to the rest of the world, every year, for 20 years.
The accumulated value is around 50% of U.S. GDP.
The rest of the world has used that money to buy up U.S. land, stocks or bonds.
The wealth of the U.S. is increasingly owned by foreigners and/or owed to all sorts of foreign creditors.
Are the goods received worth that price?
Some people like to claim that the fiat currency being sent overseas is “worthless” (since it’s just printed up), but those same people still value their own bank accounts, so of course the money being spent is valuable.
A nation which prefers to just import whatever they want, without regard to trade deficits, is silently agreeing (often without realizing it) to indenture themselves to the rest of the world, because those foreigners will eventually have all that nation’s wealth.
Right on, brother. If you need rare earth magnets for your EVs that you build domestically and about the only country you can get them from is China, well they have the power to decide when you’re S out of luck.
It’s stunning how unwilling people here are to admitting that this is very bad for the US and is only one of many examples.
We can disagree all day long how good or bad of job Trump is doing to combat this major issue, but acting like this is not needed is downright ludicrous.
I don’t think most people are opposed to some tariffs and I doubt that hardly anyone is opposed to tariff negotiation, if done in a sensible, surgical manner. What Trump is doing is neither sensible nor surgical. He’s acting like Joffrey in Game of Thrones. I don’t know if the writers of that series based Joffrey’s behavior on Trump or if Trump watched the show and was inspired by Joffrey.
I’m a proponent of what Trump is trying to do, and I can agree with most of what you’re saying here.
I agree there’s a notable lack of good planning, messaging & implementation.
Very reactionary which is classic Trump.
What else can they do with their dollars?
Apparently. Americans cannot live within their means.
A lot of money has been made off-shoring production, but the money benefits only a sliver of the population who:
arbitraged outsourced productionsold off capital goods for pennies on the dollar (to China and elsewhere)hold the bonds that finance fiscal and indirectly trade deficitsExecutives and boards of companies that outsourced were rewarded with 3× as much money as comparable peers, according to many studies … you could call them traitors.
Bonus question: Can this go on forever?
Of course not. But one of the things that makes America expensive is the institutionalized grift and rackets, the most obvious of which is healthcare.
Temporarily limiting the supply of seaport cranes, if it actually limited seaport capacity, would force triage of cargoes & loads based on value and demand.
When the goal is to rebalance trade, that is potentially a positive rather than a negative.
The actual cost of the cranes is a negligible part of the cost paid by consumers of the imported goods.
In order to make any headway, you need strategy and tactics.
Plans and details. Many of those revolve around taxes, industrial policy what you subsidize and don’t, and above all education/training, laws, and enforcement.
Waving around magic wands will not cut it.
True, but neither will standing around whining and doing nothing.
I would add that one cannot formulate the strategy & tactics until it’s clear who’s opposed.
Applying financial pressure both flushes out the opposition and also tilts the incentives in favor of change.
Not to worry as TACO has not failed yet in capitulating on the threatened tariffs.
When will Trump voters start working to undo the damage they have done to America? Not holding my breath.
maga cult are too stupid. like the acid head cult of charlie manson.
Trump is doing everything he can to destroy America.
Any Whooping Cranes on Epstein Island?
Billy Gates might be able to assist, even though it was just a few dinners with jeffrey epstein. “Well, he’s dead” might be the funniest defense ever.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LNAwUxZ5nfw
From article–Based on discussions with crane makers, it would take about 10 years to develop sufficient crane manufacturing capacity in the U.S. Jenkins said that over the next 6 years his port needs to order 22 cranes with a potential Tariff liability of $100 million. So, after that information Trump still adds a large Tariff that the American Ports will have added to their costs. Now all Americans end up paying more of those (SOITFT) Shoot Ourselves In The Foot Tarrifs. Winning Formula?
If I were a professor, I would use ZPMC as an example to teach how China came to dominate an industry once dominated by others (Japanese, Koreans, Italians, Germans, etc). The US was never really a player in gantry crane fabrication (they also construct bridge and other steel products that are labor intensive (welding steel). The Americans are players in the electrical systems that support gantry crane operations: GE as an example. ZPMC operates on an island just off the Shanghai mainland. They provide on site dorms for the workers but also a hotel operation as buyers that place large orders like to be on-site during fabrication for quality control and inspection. In other worlds, there is full transparency and ZPMC goes out of their way to invite and host visitors. I have been to their fabrication many times. It isn’t sexy but it works and the place is bustling with activity. And they have expanded beyond cranes. “Buy America” and “Buy American” provisions have slowed down and/or killed a lot of US infrastructure initiatives. It always sounds good to scream conspiracy but in this case, there is no conspiracy. It’s just America moving away from labor that requires mostly men and sweat.
Cranes are lot of steel with arms, but the port is a sophisticated operation.
Who makes the software operating the cranes? Is it ZPMC, or is it interoperable with third-party software?
ZPMC gives you the option to use their operating system or you can choose to use a 3rd party, like GE. So very much interoperable. Again, every entity that orders a crane from ZPMC can be on site during fabrication, staging for shipping and then at installation and testing and that includes Americans. Now ask the largest shipping companies and terminal operators in the world: Maersk, CMA-CGM, Hapag Lloyd, and MSC if they are concerned about security with gantry cranes? They will give you a big giant yawn because they either have their own people or 3rd party inspectors on site during fabrication. We are chasing windmills on the security concern.
Some might be chasing security, but I am only interested in the working of the industry.
Since you’re in this business, could you comment on the logistics of transporting a fully assembled crane, as pictured, across stormy oceans?
AS manufacturing returns to USA ports– will not be as busy. Also the Chinese cranes do have security issues via the internet as China could shut down their cranes in time of conflict.
The security is such a problem that ZPMC welcomes and hosts and houses buyers to be on site every step of the way. The security is such a problem that foreign buyers can live at the fabrication site and inspect progress every step of the way. ZPMC has a hotel operation on site thank you very much!
Security concerns are so high that they have to do all the extra work to convince clients even though they have a 70% market share. I doubt it will do much to calm fears.
Calming fears is a good point. And the point is that there is nothing to calm. There are no fears by anyone that matters when it comes to ZPMC gantry cranes. It’s not like ZPMC just popped up. They have dominated the market for the last quarter century plus. It’s old news.
Sure. No fears at all especially since it is owned 100% by the Chinese government and the majority of it’s bord members are also members of the Chinese Communist Party. It is under Congressional investigation but no fears at all.
It’s stunning how many CCP apologist there are on this site.
It’s as if the CCP chat bots have infiltrated little old mishtalk.com
It crazy how much people here loath America prospering even if its through the Orange Haired guy.
On site quality inspection and control is actually a best practice in any major manufacturing/fabrication operation including in Europe, the USA, Japan etc. Oddly enough, the software is not the key quality control measure: it’s the integrity of the steel welds.
As a control systems engineer, my guess is that most if not all domestic ports would not want a Chinese control system because parts are not readily available and there are very few control system technicians/engineers that would be trained to repair or upgrade them. Most likely they would use either Rockwell Automation or Siemens control systems with US or European sensors and motor drives. This is very typical for any major piece of equipment that is purchased no matter what the country of origin.
Then why are US ports using this equipment and wanting more?
Because they’re cheaper?
Mish, I’m long time reader of your blog. I believe almost since inception. English is not my mother’s tongue, apologize up front. I have a question, why you dropped any comments on Bitcoin. Were you wrong?!? Just very much curious!
Thank you!
My statements about what government “could” do with Bitcoin were accurate, and still are.
If the US government or the Fed ever feared bitcoin, they could and would crush it. Bitcoin fans dispute this but they are wrong.
But what could have happened didn’t. That does not mean it won’t, just that it didn’t.
So now what? Trump saw an opportunity to put his name on coins and went the other way, embracing crypto.
Trump is doing all sorts of extremely questionable things, but that’s another issue.
Yet, the whole point of Bitcoin was to avoid governments and hedge funds and futures etc. But the fans cheer.
It’s now a hedge fund plaything.
Bitcoin will never be money although at times it can act like it.
The question at hand is does one like Bitcoin north of $100,000?
You tell me.
By the way, your English is great.
As a serious question, how long do you think it will be before the US Treasury implements a dollar-based CBDC?
I can’t imagine the answer is never, but personally I don’t think it’s anytime soon.
MP Materials (NYSE: MP) has entered a multi-billion-dollar public-private partnership with the US Department of Defense (DoD) to build a domestic supply chain for rare earth magnets, reducing America’s reliance on foreign sources.
The deal will make the DoD the largest shareholder in MP Materials, after acquiring $400 million worth of preferred stock. The investment is part of a broader investment package and long-term strategic commitments from the federal government, the company said on Thursday.
It’s about time.
rare earth are complicated….
The global supply of heavy rare earths partly depends on the outcome of a prolonged conflict between a rebel group and the Chinese-backed military junta in the hills of northern Myanmar.
The Kachin Independence Army since December has been battling the junta over the town of Bhamo, less than 100 km (62 miles) from the Chinese border, as part of the civil war that erupted after the military’s 2021 coup.
Nearly half of the world’s heavy rare earths are mined in Myanmar’s Kachin state, especially near the key town of Bhamo, and sent to China for processing into magnets used in electric vehicles and wind turbines.
China, which holds a near-monopoly on rare earth processing, has threatened to stop buying minerals from areas controlled by the Kachin Independence Army (KIA) unless it halts efforts to seize full control of Bhamo.
https://stratnewsglobal.com/world-news/myanmar-kia-clash-risks-chinas-rare-earth-imports/
More and more tariffs.
Higher and higher bitcoin price
Higher and higher gold and silver prices.
lower and lower dollar index
love it.
I am stupid long BTC. Last night over drinks a friend said… “you know… the fake money?” I and a few other non-Bitcoiners all in unison say “Bitcoin!” I love that so few know about it still. More leash for our trades
IYKYK
dont you hate it when this happens? I didn’t sign up for the Trump Mobile cellphone plan. I still haven’t received my gold plated Trump phone. But the company just charged my credit card again.
https://www.404media.co/trump-mobile-keeps-charging-my-credit-card-and-i-have-no-idea-why/
Person is advised to complain to federal law enforcement. HAW HAW!
That is one of the most amazing trades ever done: Trump traded the potential inside of a jail cell for control over the feds. Stranger than fiction.
Dollar’s down hill is accelerating.
Next up – bond vigilantes
Thank you for your attention to this matter
“ China produces more than 70% of the world’s ship-to-shore cranes”
“ it would take about a decade to develop sufficient crane manufacturing capacity in the U.S.”
Where have I heard this kind of story before, and what was it referring to?
Steel, aluminum, copper, potash, lumber, auto parts etc.
Yes. We can produce more of all these things domestically. But it will take a decade before we can increase production very much and in the meantime our companies are paying tariffs on things they must import from elsewhere.
Golden Age, here we come!
The goal posts are either receding steadily, or (a la Lewis Carroll) dancing all over the place. Strange as a fanciful farcical story, except wow, it is us, it is real.
it’s obvious Trump is doing the tariffs in large part to have procession of people come groveling to him asking for special dispensation. it plays to the core of his being.
this sort of stuff is also why tariffs fell out of favor over the decades and centuries because it led to more than grovelling it led to corruption, payments and favors for special exemptions. But Trump would never do that right MAGA?
No. Tariffs fell out of favor because the Free Trade Lobby convinced lawmakers that even if many countries cheat, free trade would still create more wealth for us. We now know the results of that policy.
“We now know the results of that policy.”
The greatest creation of wealth in human history?
OK, yeah, the Chinese were rigging the game, and that needed to stop. But still.
Creation of stock market wealth more likely because the wealth is not in making things but in assets like stocks, real estate ect whose prices have been artificially inflated because of FED mismanagement and the financialization of the economy leading to the ever-increasing concentration of that wealth in fewer and fewer hands. It is more and more paper wealth which is rent-seeking rather than wealth that comes from creating things.
I agree, Doug.
When the Fed pivoted on a dime back in 2008 and adopted an MMT-based means for managing the US economy, then we can certainly call that Fed mismanagement. A $9T balance sheet was insane and has fueled the mother of all asset bubble.
Like I said in another post, paying $180B in one year on Free Money pumped into the banking system isn’t doing a damn thing for the poor & underserved.
It’s time to stop letting the Chinese race past us.
Wealth is not created but produced.
Any wealth that is created is simply a temporary distortion of finance and markets.
All wealth is a precipitate of human effort, be it in transforming natural wealth, or in manufacture, or in the provision of a service.
Actually, the US fought its most intense war (the Civil War) over the right to impose tariffs on trade. America became prosperous behind a tariff wall, as did all other prosperous nations, who built up there capital and (social) infrastructure behind import tariffs until they became competitive.
Otherwise Mozambique would be business heaven: Cheap labor, low taxes, little government regulation.
Ports won’t need those cranes anytime soon since imports / exports will drop under proposed tariffs. By the time replacement cranes are needed, US manufacturers will be able to meet the demand.
U.S. manufacturers won’t ramp up their ability to make the cranes.
Yes we will just double our domestic capacity by this time next Tuesday! Why didn’t everybody think of that?
Got to start somewhere. If you don’t start you will never get there.
Meanwhile, enjoy being the payor.
Do you pay or are you paid?
It’s simply amazing that you have to point something like that out to these people. Jaw dropping actually.
We might as well hand China the keys to our economy, Silicon Valley, Congress, The Fed, & The White House.
Maybe then, they’d be happy.
It is pretty pathetic that the US cannot build cranes to unload ships, worse yet that it would take a decade to be able to bring crane construction onshore.
The US and other nations have gotten themselves into vulnerable positions to save a few (million) bucks and are now at the mercy of Xi and other CCP officials.
Autarky isn’t cheap but it’s priceless for national security
And if every country in the world took the same attitude there would be zero international trade and all of our living standards would plummet. Brilliant strategy.
maga
A MAGA vote was indeed a vote for lower living standards. Odd to be celebrating it as a game winning touchdown.
I WAS being sarcastic by typing maga
I find the ten-year time frame to build crane manufacturing capacity a bit of a scare tactic. During WW2, auto manufacturing plants were converted to cranking out airplanes in very short order. If the need is there, it will be filled. That does not mean I agree with the tariff, just that the point for arguing against it is dubious at best.
Limited resources must be allocated. Rushing for a scale-up of a few lines of products in a war is one thing. Spreading scarce resources over a planet’s worth of productive capacity is not at all the same thing. I think arguing against this is dubious at best. More like magical thinking.
thats right who is going to build these USA made cranes?
Why Factories Are Having Trouble Filling Nearly 400,000 Open Jobs – The New York Times (archive.ph)
If you pay them well they will come. If you offer no meaningful incentives they will not come.
It is that simple, but people who are not industrious think that industrious people should obey a different standard
NYT still carrying water for those who worked hard to gut our manufacturing base while filling their pockets. It’s always “we can’t do anymore ….” to justify their will to keep us from doing it.
And the incidental if bothersome reality that autarky has never worked, long term, anywhere? How do we dispose of that? That is crashed the Chinese empire, setting up their centuries of humiliation, and multiple states ever since, which often had laughably bad results?