St. Vin­cent and the Grenadines Prime Min­is­ter Dr. Ralph Gon­salves, yes­ter­day warned that the re­gion could face se­vere eco­nom­ic prob­lems if the Unit­ed States goes ahead with a pro­pos­al to im­pose a port fee of one mil­lion US dol­lars per port call on any Chi­nese-built ves­sel call­ing at US ports.

“I want every­body to lis­ten to me care­ful­ly. This mat­ter, if im­ple­ment­ed as pro­posed by the US it will be one of the most se­vere blows to the economies of the Caribbean.” Gon­salves said dur­ing his week­ly ra­dio pro­gramme on the state-owned NBC ra­dio, adding “I don’t want to be hys­ter­i­cal”.

Gon­salves said that the mat­ter had been dis­cussed dur­ing last Fri­day’s vir­tu­al meet­ing of Caribbean Com­mu­ni­ty (Cari­com) lead­ers, as well as with the Cari­com Pri­vate Sec­tor Or­ga­ni­za­tion (CP­SO) last Tues­day.

The US gov­ern­ment’s in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to Chi­na’s dom­i­nance in ship­build­ing, mar­itime and lo­gis­tics start­ed un­der the Biden ad­min­is­tra­tion and in Jan­u­ary, the US­TR is­sued its find­ings on the mat­ter.

In a state­ment on Feb­ru­ary 21, the US­TR said that “to ob­tain the elim­i­na­tion of Chi­na’s acts, poli­cies, and prac­tices, and in light of Chi­na’s mar­ket pow­er over glob­al sup­ply, pric­ing, and ac­cess in the mar­itime, lo­gis­tics, and ship­build­ing sec­tors, US­TR pro­pos­es to im­pose cer­tain fees and re­stric­tions on in­ter­na­tion­al mar­itime trans­port ser­vices re­lat­ed to Chi­nese ship op­er­a­tors and Chi­nese-built ships, as well as to pro­mote the trans­port of US goods on US ves­sels.”

The high fees be­ing pro­posed are seen as a way to chan­nel more ship­build­ing back to the Unit­ed States.

CP­SO pres­i­dent, Dr Patrick An­toine, has al­ready in­formed the US­TR that the fees would lead to “as­tro­nom­i­cal lev­els,” in the in­crease cost of goods be­ing moved out of US ports in­to the Caribbean.

“In­deed, the so­cial and eco­nom­ic ram­i­fi­ca­tions of any such mea­sures by the Unit­ed States is un­think­able,” An­toine said, adding “the CP­SO al­so recog­nis­es the im­me­di­ate jeop­ardy which any mea­sure as may be un­der con­sid­er­a­tion by the US­TR, will hold for Cari­com mem­ber states, such as An­tigua and Bar­bu­da, Do­mini­ca, Grena­da, St Lu­cia, St. Vin­cent and the Grenadines, and Suri­name, among oth­ers, where well over 50 per cent of the ships ply­ing these routes are Chi­nese con­struct­ed”

Gon­salves said that the move by Wash­ing­ton DC is al­so in­tend­ed to pe­nalise fu­ture pur­chase of Chi­nese made ves­sels “by en­ti­ties wish­ing to ac­cess the US mar­ket, both in­bound and out­bound.

“So they are tar­get­ing ex­ist­ing Chi­nese ves­sels an they are de­ter­ring the fu­ture pur­chase of such ves­sels by en­ti­ties go­ing in or com­ing out of the US,” he said, adding that “these puni­tive charges tar­get Chi­nese op­er­a­tors of ves­sels di­rect­ly as well as the fleets which op­er­ate with Chi­nese built ves­sels.

“So they want to deal with the Chi­nese op­er­a­tors and they want to deal with the Chi­nese fleets and in the process priv­i­leg­ing US in­ter­est an US built ves­sels,” Gon­salves told ra­dio lis­ten­ers.

“They are pe­nal­is­ing the Chi­nese op­er­a­tors and the Chi­nese ships, which al­ready ex­ist. They are pe­nal­is­ing the op­er­a­tor who or­der­ing ships,” Gon­salves said, “If you want to take US goods out, 20 per cent must be on a US flag ship or US-built ship.

Gon­salves said the Caribbean trade has links with the Unit­ed States “so we are re­al­ly ex­posed to the harm­ful ef­fects of these pol­i­cy mea­sures as the main ship­ping lines serv­ing the re­gion are com­prised of a sig­nif­i­cant num­ber of Chi­nese built ships, most­ly ply­ing routes linked to ports in South­ern Flori­da.

“The pri­ma­ry op­er­a­tors on these routes as you know are Trop­i­cal Ship­ping…which has at least 47 per cent of its fleet built in Chi­na. Seaboard Ma­rine, an­oth­er com­pa­ny which plies our area, with around 48 per cent of its fleet built in Chi­na and King Ocean with about 25 per cent of the fleet built in Chi­na,” Gon­salves said, not­ing that there are oth­er ma­jor ship­ping lines that have an­nounced plans to ex­pand their fleet.

“You could see straight away that Trop­i­cal Ship­ping and Seaboard Ma­rine…ships with sub­stan­tial Chi­nese fleet go­ing to have some chal­lenges,” Gon­salves added.

(CMC)