On 21 February, The Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR) announced it was inviting comments from the public in respect of its “Section 301 Investigation of China’s Targeting of the Maritime, Logistics, and Shipbuilding Sectors for Dominance”. BIMCO has submitted comments for the public hearing which will be held on 24 March 2025. You can view our letter with comments to the USTR here. While the content of the proposal is available to study, it is, however, not yet clear how this will develop and how a potential trade action will be initiated. BIMCO will follow the situation closely and provide updates to our members and on our website when more information is available. Since the “Proposed Actions” were published we have received many inquiries concerning both existing and new charter party clauses and whether they may be relevant for the potential outcome of this situation. For existing charter parties, it may not be possible to include additional clauses to cover such unexpected scenarios and one must scrutinise the applicable contract to determine whether it contains any provisions which could be relevant in the context of establishing who might be responsible for the proposed fees when calling at US ports. While this is not an exhaustive list, it will be relevant to consider the following in respect of shipping contracts: How does the contract allocate “fees”? And if it turns out that it will be imposed in a different form, what about taxes and tariffs? Does the contract cater for a potentially relevant “hardship” clause, and if so, could this be relevant in the present case? Could the “Proposed Actions” be considered to be a “force majeure” event or does the contract otherwise contain clauses defining that such events could create grounds for one or both parties to terminate the contract? These are only a few examples to consider, but we think that in many cases existing contracts must be performed and depending on the outcome of the “Propose