Boston To Beijing: Maritime Strategy Now

From Buzzards Bay to Beijing — this week was all about maritime strategy in motion.

Lauren recaps highlights from the Second Annual Massachusetts Maritime Strategy Conference, where federal and state leaders worked to align the Commonwealth with other states developing maritime strategies. From workforce pipelines to new ideas like a State House Office of Maritime Affairs, momentum is building.

She also breaks down today’s USTR deadline on suspending the Section 301 China vessel and port fees — explaining who actually paid (hint: not shippers), why the pause matters, and what to watch next.

⚓ Long Summary 

This week, strategy met reality — in two different arenas.

Lauren dives into the Second Annual Massachusetts Maritime Strategy Conference, where state and federal leaders gathered at Massachusetts Maritime Academy to chart the next chapter of the Commonwealth’s maritime future.
From the federal panel featuring Bill Doyle, USCG Rear Adm. (ret.) John Mauger, and Bill Golden to the brainstorming session that generated bold ideas — a possible YouTube campaign to promote the industry, a dedicated Office of Maritime Affairs, and ideas for incentives for ship repair jobs — the day’s energy was unmistakable.

And the conversation hit home when Boston Ship Repair posted a photo of its idle dry dock and tagged MARAD, MSC, and NAVSEA — a reminder of why state-based maritime strategies matter. As Lauren puts it: “We need quick, clear menus of what each state can offer — because when federal funding is ready, it needs a place to go.”

Then she turns to Washington, where the U.S. Trade Representative is closing public comments today on the Section 301 suspension — pausing the China-built and China-operated vessel fees for one year.

Lauren explains why shippers largely avoided the cost (as carriers like COSCO and OOCL absorbed it), how the policy became a targeted pressure point, and why this “pause” is really a strategic timeout.

🎓 Just-in-Time Learning™

If this episode has you wanting to get back to the basics of “Who actually handles what in maritime?” check out “FMC vs. MARAD – Who Does What?”, available now at TheMaritimeProfessor.com
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Chapters

• 0:00 Opening And Theme Set
• 1:40 Massachusetts Maritime Strategy Summit Recap
• 6:50 Aligning Federal Programs With State Priorities
• 12:30 Brainstorming Big Ideas And Workforce
• 18:20 Idle Shipyards And Urgent Utilization
• 22:40 National Maritime Action Plan Timing

Transcript

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Another week, another maritime strategy that we're talking about. But this time we're jetting back and forth in our discussion from Boston to Beijing. Here in Massachusetts, the second annual Massachusetts Maritime Strategy Conference brought together federal, state, and industry leaders for a day full of coordination, innovation, and shipboard celebration. And in Washington, today actually marks a comment deadline for suspending Section 301 China port fees. Did you know that there was a comment section or a comment period for this? It was a short comment period. Two different rooms, one clear theme. Maritime strength comes from strategy. We're going to continue to break it all down. Hi, welcome back to By Land and by Sea, an attorney breaking down the weekend supply chain, presented by me, the Maritime Professor. I'm Lauren Beegan, founder of the Maritime Professor, former FMC International Affairs Attorney, and founder of Skull Strategies. By Land and By Sea is your go-to resource for navigating the regulatory side of global ocean shipping. And me, I'm your favorite maritime attorney. As always, this podcast is for educational purposes only and should not be considered legal advice. There's no attorney client privilege created by this video or this podcast. If you need an attorney, contact an attorney. So let's get into it because as you know, ocean shipping moves the world. All right. Segment one, story of the week, this first story. This week, maritime stakeholders of Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and beyond, coming from DC, all over the all over the country, actually, gathered at Massachusetts Maritime Academy in Buzzards Bay for the second annual Massachusetts Maritime Strategy Conference, Massachusetts Maritime Strategy Summit, we were calling it sometimes. It was the strongest showing yet. I had the privilege of helping to plan and moderate some of the events. And this year's focus was clear aligning Massachusetts with a growing number of states. We have Washington State, Michigan, Louisiana, I think Texas, Florida. Look, there's a lot of state-based maritime strategies in one form or another that are coming together. And Massachusetts is part of that. From the opening remarks, the energy was unmistakable. This wasn't just a static policy meeting. This was an active workshop. This was a conversation about how Massachusetts and the surrounding areas can help lead the conversation in what the priorities are in these states and these Commonwealths. We started the morning with a federal panel. It had former FMC Commissioner Bill Doyle. We had former rear admiral, retired rear admiral John Mauger of the U.S. Coast Guard. We had Bill Golden, former Massachusetts representative, now focused on maritime financing, and myself. Together, we all explored how federal programs and state priorities can align to strengthen the maritime sector. We talked about infrastructure funding, shipyard revitalization, some of the signals that we're seeing out of DC that may benefit states and Commonwealths. It was a fantastic conversation with a lot of insights on things to be paying attention to. Things that we often talk about on this podcast, anyways. And then after federal came the Massachusetts panel, it looked inward. How do we organize across agencies, ports, and educational institutions to support this industry that we already have, that we have had for quite a long time. And how do we prepare for what's next? Leaders discuss regional coordination, workforce pipelines, integrating maritime policy with economic development. It was a great conversation as well. Then we moved into our keynote speaker. Bill Joyle joined again. He returned to the stage to deliver powerful updates on what he's hearing from DC. He covered federal maritime investments, port modernization, MARA ed programs, and the big picture shift towards a more resilient U.S. maritime industrial base, often talking about some of the components that we're seeing come out of the Ships Act. After lunch, then we shifted gears and we went into a moderated brainstorming session. Now, this might have been truly the most dynamic part of the day. The floor was open to the full audience. We had port directors, mariners, shipyard executives, educators, ship repair facilities. We had everything in the room. Not everyone exactly, but we had core priorities identified by those that were in the room on what a Massachusetts maritime strategy could and perhaps should include. The ideas came pouring in during this brainstorming session. They were creative, they were ambitious, they were rooted in some of the real industry needs that we have out there. We had great, great ideas, like statewide campaigns. I mean, think YouTube channel. I don't know if you ever saw ice road truckers, but I did in the 90s, right? I think it was Discovery Channel or something. I know a lot about ice road trucking. I probably will never be an ice road trucker myself, but I know a lot about it. Perhaps the maritime industry needs something like that. We were actually showing videos of colleagues that we know, mariners out there, and some of the cool things that they get to see while they're out at sea. Wouldn't that be cool to have that in a YouTube channel? We'll see, we'll see. That was one of the cool ideas. Also, there's a lot of talk with these state-based maritime strategies about perhaps offices, maritime-specific offices within state houses, perhaps Office of Maritime Affairs, maritime shipbuilding, something that's not just a subcategory of a state DOT, but perhaps an actual dedicated maritime office to ensure these maritime issues have direct coordinated voice among the state policy. We'll see. There were also calls for perhaps financial incentives targeting maritime industries, kind of mirroring some of these federal pushes and federal ideas. One that I keep hearing is perhaps no income tax on mariners. Perhaps maybe there's something there at the state level to support ship repair or other cyclical maritime jobs that experience long layoff periods between contracts. That was one of the examples brought up during that discussion. And that's exactly why these conversations matter, right? These are quick, clear, perhaps cheat sheets of what each state has to offer, these state-based initiatives for maritime strategies. Because when federal funding is ready, and if it needs a place to go, knowing what we already have, I keep calling them these menus of what the state has to offer, maritime menus. What we already have to offer is likely more than half the battle of figuring out where it needs to go, right? A perfect example actually just popped up right before I was coming on live today from the Boston Ship Repair. They posted a photo of their dry dock with a message saying, our docks, our docks have been still for two months now. And our team, some of the best ship repair professionals anywhere, are eager to get back to work. And the message then tagged Mered and Military Sea Lift Command and Navse, NSWC, and Newarick. And then it followed up with if you've got hulls that need work, we've got the people, the skills, and the space to make it happen. Let's get this yard moving again. Now, this struck me, yes, we should have our maritime industries compete. Yes, we absolutely should. But we shouldn't have ship repair yards sit idle, especially in a time when we are focusing on maritime dominance and maritime resilience and maritime becoming a large industry again and the industrial base being well supported. How can a business sustain if we don't have vessels in a repair yard? If we we need to get there, right? But we need to keep these businesses busy. And if this is a priority of the administration, we have to get to work before we lose these locations. And I think that speaks to the larger point too. How do we keep talented shipyard employees in this industry if they're sitting idle or facing layoffs for months at a time? And even when they are working, perhaps like in Boston, they're sometimes fighting traffic just to get into the city to reach the yard. Look, one thing's for sure here, we have to get this industry busy. We have to get this industry busy if we want it to have lasting power. And we have to get places like Boston Ship Repair some ships to repair, right? This is what state-based maritime strategy is all about. This is also what the national maritime strategy is all about. This week was Maritime Action Plan Day. And I will give a little deference here. We are in a government shutdown. I can only imagine that we don't have the same manpower that we would have otherwise to get the maritime action plan out. But November 5th was happy maritime action plan day. I'm hoping we get something this month. We'll see. I keep, we'll see. I keep just having this feeling that maybe something by the end of the month or in the next few weeks, but we'll see. I know that there it everything takes reviews, right? But that's part of what all of this is about, right? Both the state-based maritime strategies and these national and a potential national maritime strategy may be coming from this maritime action plan. We need coordination, we need visibility and readiness so that when opportunity is ready, when the infrastructure and the workforce are ready to answer, when the dollars are ready, we have, we need to make sure the infrastructure is there and we and the workforce is ready. We need to grow that workforce. But by growing it, we need to make sure that the current workforce we have is busy, right? The final panel brought it all together again with a look ahead, perhaps. It was a tech AI future maritime panel, and the discussion explored AI, digital innovation imports, on the water, digital innovation and AI in the vessel, and discussing how technology will reshape both operations and workforce needs in the next decade. It was the perfect note to end on, forward-looking and ambitious. And then we stepped out onto the pier, and this was kind of fun. We had a tour of the brand new national security multi-mission vessel, this these NSMV vessels. You may recall that I went and got to see the christening of the state of Maine. Now, this was the vessel given to Massachusetts Maritime Academy. This was the training ship Patriot State. It was the NFM V vessel given to Mass Maritime. And it was cool, guys. It was cool. They had a whole bridge that was for operations, and then they had a whole bridge that was for training. So you could actually feel like you were navigating without overburdening the actual people who were driving the vessel, but you could kind of mirror and mimic on just one floor down. It was cool. Like it still had that unmistakable new ship smell. And I'm not telling you I know much or or I have smelled many brand new vessels going out, but it smelled like fresh paint. It smelled like fresh rubber. It smelled like clean steel. Look, seeing the next generation of training capability up close was so exciting and really a reminder of what investment in maritime really looks like. This has been a good idea for a long time, right? This this VCM, this vessel construction manager NSMV project is not new. It did not get stood up six months ago, but it is worth celebrating and worthy of celebration and important to celebrate because it is a good idea that's gone well. And these are fantastic vessels that were made for training, that were made for the next round of mariners out there, but are also able to be uplifted in times of need. Look, we wrap the day with this mix-and-mingle happy hour during the vessel tours, right alongside the vessel tours. It was an informal chance to debrief trade cards and keep that conversation going. Look, initial readouts of this conference were that it was so fun, such a success, and it's already getting everybody's wheels turning on what Massachusetts maritime strategy should and could look like, but how it aligns at the state, regional, and national level. Look, the momentum is going. We plan to do this again next year. If you're interested, reach out. We'd love to have you at the third annual Massachusetts Maritime Strategy Conference. We're looking at November 12th with maybe a golf tournament. Apparently, there were about 12 maritime stakeholders that all got together the day before this conference and went golfing. So maybe we'll have a golf tournament with it. But this one's becoming a can't miss event. We'd love to see you next year. All right. The second thing that I wanted to cover was the Section 301 maritime suspension. If you caught my interview last week with Sal Marcagliana, we had just heard that they were pausing the vessel and the port fees, but we didn't know much about it. We didn't know, you know, it was a handshake agreement, but we still needed to see what USCR's proposal was for it. So today, November 7th, is the common deadline for the US trade representative's proposal to suspend for one year, right? This came from November 1st when Trump made the agreement with President Xi of China that they would be delaying by one year the Section 301 port and vessel fees. Remember, this is targeting China's shipbuilding and the dominance that they have there. Earlier this year, the U.S. imposed fees on China built, China-operated vessels, calling it U.S. ports, citing China's efforts to dominate the global maritime supply chain. Then, like we know, the White House announced a Trump-Shi economic deal directing USTR to propose a one-year suspension. And that was the key part here. It directed USTR to propose this one-year suspension of those measures. And everything kept saying that this was going to be for November 10th. And so here we are, we're not quite at November 10th. So the fees are still in place. We are still collecting funds off of China-built or China-operated vessels calling it US ports for another three days. So it needed to go to the USTR to have a comment period. And so that's what we saw is just yesterday on the 6th, and word is I guess it came out around noon, that there was a call for comments. And so the deadline is actually today, 5 p.m. We're we're just about there for comments to be filed, request for comments for suspending Section 301 action for one year. Look, sometimes late comments are accepted. But I if you have in the next little bit, send over your comments. Last check, there were about 50 comments that had actually been filed. I don't think that this is going to be too contentious. I think that this is going to be something that is kind of a procedural, you know, this will delay for the next year. But however, I think that this is interesting because what I saw in these first just under a month that these fees have been open, most shippers never actually saw these fees being passed on. The cost burden was largely absorbed by the vessel owners and operators themselves, particularly right, those directly assessed and having the higher fees. So, right, Costco and OCL were in some of the trade presses having some of the larger fees with their port, with their US port calls. And sure there were there were a few others as well. It wasn't just Costco and OCL, but those were the ones that we had heard a few from the trade press. But there were also a handful of unintended cases where vessels with some US connection were caught in this classification net. But for the most part, what I saw was that China-linked operators felt the most of the financial impact. And it's interesting because it it kind of almost turned into like a cash squeeze or a cash grab on these Chinese carriers. Because they were, from kind of how I saw it, it felt like they were likely a little stuck, right? Because if they shifted their vessels out of US service, they risked losing customers. And this is just the purely Chinese operated, because Chinese operated had a higher level. Chinese built for the most part, most ocean carriers were able to reposition their fleets. So they had Korean or Japanese built vessels repositioned into the US trade lane. And their Chinese vessels were moved out of any US trade lanes. But Chinese operated vessels couldn't really do that. So all they had was to potentially move their Chinese operated vessels maybe into a US counterpart if it existed. And that's where they could maybe avoid part of it. But and it doesn't really, I guess what I'm trying to say is look, they couldn't really shift out of the US service because then they risked losing US customers, access to US customers. But then if they were to pass the fees on to their customers, and like I said, none of the other ocean carriers were passing them on. And the Chinese-based or Chinese operated carriers also said the same thing that they wouldn't be passing them on. But had this continued, had they passed those fees on, they risked those same customers perhaps going into back to the market and saying, well, I'm going to go find somebody who's not passing on the fees. And to be clear, nobody was passing on the fees. As far as I can see, as far as I've heard, I have not heard of anybody saying that any of these vessel port calls or vessel fees, these China Section 301 vessel when port fees were being passed on to the shippers. So most of these ocean carriers that were Chinese operated just absorbed the hit themselves. And that's, I guess, why I see this as it's kind of just a cash grab from the US to these Chinese operated carriers. And so we still have three more days of that. However, while this suspension pauses that financial cash grab, I guess you could call it, it doesn't end the policy. And I think that this is important because it's a temporary hole while the US and China work through negotiations. And I think everything is done in good faith here with the full intention of honoring the commitments. But I do think that it's worth keeping a close eye on because there's a lot of policy levers that the president and the administration can pull if perhaps China were to fail to upload some of it, fail to uphold some of its commitments. And I think that this one might be an attractive lever to pull, because this might be one that, like I said, it kind of just turned into a cash grab that had limited impact to US importers or US consumers because it wasn't getting passed on. And that's not to say that it wouldn't forever, because that might be unsustainable to have that much money coming off the vessel. And that was the whole point, right? When this was first introduced as the vessel fees and the port fees, these are significant amounts of money for the vessel operator or the vessel owner to be taking on as a hit. It ends up being a little bit more sliced and diced down to the shipper should it get passed on. But everybody said it wasn't getting passed on, and that's what I saw, right? So for now, the impact of shipper remains minimal. And during the pause, I mean, it remains part of the world of uncertainty. It seems that the markets are absorbing the uncertainty a little bit better, but the geopolitical significance is still very active on this. And I think that it's worth just watching. I wouldn't put this on your calendar as in one year, this will be off. I think that this is one to keep an eye on. And you know, you know I will. You know I will. Keep attuned to this podcast. I'm gonna keep watching this. But that's the word, right? November 10th, we have a pause on these vessel fees, and that will extend until November 9th, 2026. So assuming that the comments filed and closing in just a few minutes here are fine. And USTR thinks that there's nothing too significantly adverse. Although there are a few people who did file that they liked them because they were kind of serving their purpose of moving Chinese built vessels out of U.S. service. For the most part, there were a lot of shippers and shipper associations saying, look, the uncertainty of we're not sure if these fees would ever be passed down was too much to bear. They they liked the pause, they applaud the pause for most of the comments that I saw filed. So I'm gonna keep watching this, but that's it. Three days from now, we will be having a pause on these vessel fees. I'm gonna keep watching it all. Look, if all of this political maritime conversation has you wanting to just maybe get back to basics a bit, check out my just in time learning course, FMC vs Marad, who does what? It is part of the just in time learning series, which is plain language breakdown of all things maritime, right? But we have U.S. maritime agencies in this specific course. Who does what? What who what's the FMC do? What does FM, what does Marad do? What's the delineation? I break it down for you in 30 minutes or less. It's available now at the Maritimeprofessor.com. And I'd also like to say that the Maritime Professor is thrilled to partner this year with Manifest Future of Supply Chain. February 9th through 11th, 2026, we will be at the Venetian and Las Vegas joining Manifest Future of Supply Chain. Join us in more than 7,000 of your closest friends in the industry. We have industry leaders, innovators, and investors. And you can save$200 if you use our link, which is http manifestvegas.com slash join slash the maritime professor. So if you like this episode, be sure to follow, subscribe, and leave a review. Want to go deeper on these topics or bring this kind of insight to your team, visit themaritimeprofessor.com to explore corporate trainings, tailored briefings, and on-demand webinars, all designed to make complex maritime regulations practical and easy to understand. And if your organization needs help navigating the legal or strategic side of ocean shipping, head over to Squall Strategies. That's where I provide consulting services, regulatory guidance, and policy support across the global supply chain. And as always, this podcast is for educational purposes only. It is not to be considered legal advice. If you need an attorney, contact an attorney. But until next time, I'm Lauren Beegan, the maritime professor, and you've just listened to By Land and By C. See you next time.