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Ocean Nov 9, 2026 · 7 min read

USTR pushes China exclusions and ship fees to 9 January

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USTR moves the China cliff to 9 January: 178 exclusions and ship fees on hold for two more months

The US Trade Representative (USTR) has cancelled Monday’s double deadline. In two notices dated 6 November 2026, it extended all 178 current China Section 301 tariff exclusions and kept its port fees on China-linked ships suspended for two more months.

Section 301 is the US trade law used since 2018 to put extra tariffs on Chinese goods. An “exclusion” is a carve-out that lets a specific product skip that extra duty. The exclusions now cover goods entered, or withdrawn from a bonded warehouse, from 12:01am ET on 10 November 2026 up to 11:59pm ET on 9 January 2027. The ship-fee suspension, effective 9 November, runs to 11:59pm ET on 9 January 2027. It also keeps tariffs on ship-to-shore (STS) cranes and other cargo-handling equipment switched off.

Our view: this is the right decision, made on time, but it buys only about eight weeks. Washington has not settled anything. It has moved the cliff into the busiest weeks of the shipping year and kept both measures as bargaining chips for the next two Trump–Xi meetings.

What USTR actually signed

The exclusions notice is short. It says: “In light of ongoing discussions with China, the Trade Representative has determined that it is appropriate to further extend all 178 current exclusions”. It adds that USTR “may continue to consider further extensions or additional modifications as appropriate.” It is signed by Jennifer Thornton, USTR’s General Counsel.

The 178 exclusions sit under two tariff headings. Heading 9903.88.69 covers 164 product-specific exclusions. Heading 9903.88.70 covers 14 exclusions for solar manufacturing equipment, according to Great Lakes Customs Law. The covered goods include industrial machinery, medical devices, specialty chemicals and vehicle climate-control parts, the firm says.

One detail matters for entry filers. The body of the notice says the extension runs “until January 10, 2027”. The dates section and both annexes say the cover ends at 11:59pm ET on 9 January 2027. The annexes are the part that changes the tariff schedule. Treat 9 January, 11:59pm Eastern, as the last moment an entry can claim the exclusion.

The second notice deals with the maritime case. That is the separate Section 301 action against China’s shipbuilding and logistics sector. USTR says the action “is no longer appropriate and will be further suspended for two months, until January 10, 2027.” Its dates section puts the end at 11:59pm ET on 9 January 2027. Under the suspension, “no party will accrue liability for or be required to pay the fees on maritime transport services”. The same applies to the crane and equipment duties in Annex V.A. USTR says it received “approximately 60 unique comments” on its October proposal. That proposal was filed under docket USTR-2026-0694, gCaptain reported.

What would have happened on Monday

Without the extension, the 178 product lines would have gone back to full Section 301 duty from 10 November. That means an extra 7.5% to 25% “on top of the MFN rate, depending on the product’s original list assignment”, according to Great Lakes Customs Law. MFN, or most-favoured-nation, is the normal US import duty. Shredder hammers and other wear parts used in metal recycling would face a 25% tariff without their exclusion, Recycling Today has reported. Those parts still pay other duties, including 50% Section 232 steel tariffs.

The ship fees would also have come back. When they were first charged, Chinese-owned or operated vessels paid “$50/nettonpervoyage”,S&PGlobalreported.Chinese-builtvesselspaid“$18/nt or $120 per container discharged”. Washington started collecting on 14 October 2025 and suspended the fees on 10 November 2025, so they ran for less than four weeks, gCaptain reported. Even that short window was expensive. China charged mirror fees on US-linked ships, and Matson reported $6.4 million in reciprocal Chinese port fees during the period, according to gCaptain. The same report put COSCO’s estimated exposure to the US fees at about $1.5 billion a year.

A one-year suspension followed the trade deal the White House announced on 1 November 2025, the ships notice says. This time USTR offered two months. Holland & Knight called the proposed extension “substantially shorter” than the original one-year suspension and warned: “Stakeholders should be prepared for the possibility that the fees and duties could resume after January 9, 2027”.

Why two months, and why now

The short timeline tracks the politics. On 6 November, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and USTR Jamieson Greer spoke to Chinese Vice Premier He Lifeng. Afterwards, Bessent wrote: “I emphasized the importance of China fully and immediately honoring its commitments”, Reuters reported via The Standard. Greer stressed “the critical importance of China taking concrete actions to fully implement its past commitments”, according to a USTR statement cited in the same report. The focus was farm purchases, rare earths and other critical minerals, USTR said.

Trump and Xi are due to meet at APEC in Shenzhen on 18–19 November and at the G20 in Miami on 14–15 December. The Busan truce, which capped the tariffs Trump added on Chinese goods in his second term at about 20%, expires on 10 January, Reuters reported.

So the new deadline lines up with the truce expiry. That is deliberate, in our view. Washington wants every lever to lapse at the same moment, so China has one date to deliver against.

There is also a pattern here. USTR’s own exclusions page lists extension notices in December 2022, September 2023, December 2023, May 2024, June 2025, September 2025, December 2025 and now November 2026. Each extension since 2024 has been short, typically a few months, Great Lakes Customs Law notes. These exclusions have lived on rolling deadlines for years.

What it means for forwarders and shippers

No action is needed on Monday. Importers do not need to rush entries before 10 November or change their filing. The exclusion headings 9903.88.69 and 9903.88.70 remain valid for entries up to 11:59pm ET on 9 January.

Carriers have no basis for fee surcharges. No US port fees on China-owned, China-operated or China-built ships will accrue before 10 January. Any carrier tariff notice that adds a “USTR fee” or “port fee recovery” charge for US arrivals in this window should be challenged.

Terminal equipment orders stay unaffected for now. The crane and cargo-handling equipment tariffs remain off. Ports and terminal operators with STS cranes on order from Chinese builders have eight more weeks of certainty and no more.

The January timing is the real risk. Goods that arrive in early January are booked in late November and December, often before the year-end break. That is also when shippers try to beat the pre-Lunar New Year slowdown in Chinese factories. A shipment booked now could land on either side of the deadline. If the exclusions lapse, the importer pays the extra duty on arrival. If the ship fees return, carriers will move fast to pass the cost on to cargo.

Our advice to forwarders: build two Q1 landed-cost scenarios for every client with goods under the 178 exclusions, one with the exclusion and one at full Section 301 duty. For transpacific contracts, check whether any regulatory surcharge clause would let a carrier add a port-fee charge from 10 January. Flag any December sailings that could arrive after the 9 January cut-off.

For shippers relying on the solar-equipment and machinery exclusions, the message is the same as for the past two years. These carve-outs are a bridge, not a home. Each renewal has bought months, not years.

Our call for 9 January

We expect another extension of both measures. The process for the last one gives the timetable. USTR posted its proposal on 23 October and its final notices on 6 November, about two weeks apart, with a one-week comment window in between. To repeat that before 9 January, a proposal has to appear by late December.

Our prediction: USTR will publish a proposal to extend both the 178 exclusions and the ship-fee and crane suspension by 24 December 2026, after the G20 meeting in Miami. We expect final notices before 9 January 2027. If the Miami meeting produces a signed deal on farm goods and rare earths, we expect the next extension to run for at least six months, not two. If no proposal has appeared by 24 December, forwarders should plan for the ship fees and full exclusion duties to apply from 10 January.

Why we still lean towards extension: neither side gains from fees landing in the January peak. The cost would fall first on US importers and on carriers such as COSCO, and China has already shown it will charge mirror fees in return. A short leash keeps the pressure on. A lapse would only restart the fight both governments have spent a year trying to pause.

Sources

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