China’s Jiangsu Qinfeng Shipbuilding has secured orders from Jiangsu Lvhang Logistics for up to six containerships.

The deal, with an undisclosed value covers one firm and five optional 1,138 teu newbuilds, with the first vessel expected for delivery by November 2026.

No further details have been divulged, except that the boxships have been designed to run on LNG.

The yard, established in 2007, won orders for 16 methanol-powered bulkers from Wuhan Innovation Jianghai Transportation last September. The 15,000 dwt and 19,600 dwt newbuilds are touted as the first Chinese coastal ships to run solely on the low-carbon fuel.

During last year's season, the company operated 13 voyages between Shanghai and Arkhangelsk, carrying more than 20,000 TEUs. In 2025, NewNew Shipping plans to employ larger container ships on the Arctic Express No. 1 service.

Within a few years, the operator expects to expand its June and December navigation window by launching five specialized ice-class container ships currently under construction at a Chinese shipyard.

The second Arctic container shipping operator, Safetrans Line, has not yet announced its plans for 2025.

The governments of South Korea and Japan plan to use maritime trade as a bargaining chip to avoid the unfortunate fates of Canada and Mexico, the first two U.S. allies hit by the White House's tariff proposals. Both Japan and South Korea have shown interest in a big-ticket LNG export project from the state of Alaska, and Korea is also pitching its shipbuilding capabilities as a way to build up American maritime power.

South Korea's trade and industry minister, Ahn Duk-Geun, met last week with U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick to talk about cooperation on shipbuilding and tech industry development. As an outcome of the discussion, Ahn's office said that Korea will be setting up a shipbuilding cooperation task force drawing on multiple government agencies, including foreign affairs and defense. The U.S. Department of Commerce will set up a similar working group.

Ahn told Korean media that the Trump administration is interested in accessing South Korea's sophisticated naval shipbuilding capabilities. The U.S. Navy is struggling to overcome cost and schedule issues with almost all of its major shipbuilding programs, in part because of supply chain and labor recruitment issues; South Korea has the world's second-biggest shipbuilding industrial base, and though it has labor issues of its own, it does have a much larger pool of skilled tradesmen to draw upon. One of its yards, Hyundai Heavy Industries, has built Aegis-equipped destroyers.

According to Business Korea, Ahn offered priority access to newbuild slots at Korean shipyards for package orders of warships, tankers and icebreakers - in return for guaranteed safety from U.S. tariffs. Those slots are hard to come by, as the orderbooks at Korea's Big Three yards are booked through 2027-8 in a hot commercial newbuild market.

"At this point we don’t know how the Trump administration will play out its trade policies in the long term. So what’s most urgent now is to secure a communication channel and keep negotiating in favor of our firms," Ahn said.

The other big offer on the table is the prospect of Asian investment in the long-stalled Alaska LNG project, a proposed pipeline and export terminal that would commercialize vast quantities of natural gas from the remote North Slope. The terminal near Anchorage would liquefy up to 20 million tonnes per annum (mtpa) of LNG for export, but at an eye-watering construction cost of $44 billion.

"Currently, our country's energy supply is heavily skewed towards the Middle East, and imports of U.S. energy are important for energy security, so we are actively reviewing this," Ahn said. "We are also considering ways for private businesses to diversify energy import channels."

Japan is also in the running for a role in Alaska LNG, which had been all but defunct until the new flurry of diplomatic activity. In February, President Donald Trump described an agreement with Japan to offtake "historic" amounts of gas from the as-yet-unbuilt terminal.

"The administration is working on a gigantic natural gas pipeline in Alaska, among the largest in the world, where Japan, South Korea and other nations want to be our partner with investment of trillions of dollars each," President Donald Trump said in his recent joint session address.

In response to the growing challenges of illicit trade and supply chain security, a new industry alliance is being launched to drive the adoption of cutting-edge smart container technology. Known as the Smart Container Alliance, the group reports its goal is to unite industry leaders in a collective effort to enhance cargo traceability, fortify maritime trade, and support global enforcement agencies in the fight against criminal networks.

Announcing the formal launch of the initiative they pointed to geopolitical instability and climate-related disruptions which they said are posing increasing risks to global trade. Cargo theft, smuggling, and drug cartels have become an increasing focus of the authorities around the globe. As a result, the Alliance says shipping companies must ensure the highest levels of security and efficiency.

The Smart Container Alliance is dedicated to advancing industry standards, advocating for policy change, and fostering collaboration between technology providers, shipowners, customs authorities, and international regulatory bodies, including the European Union and the World Customs Organization. The launch of the Alliance aligns with the broader industry commitment that calls for increased investment in customs operations, digital transformation, and enhanced public-private partnerships to address the growing complexity of global trade.

“Smart Cargo and Container Telematics are the foundation for the 21st Century Supply Chain with revolutionary new solutions for our society, authorities, governments, and businesses to structurally reduce illicit trade, cargo contamination, cargo waste, theft and supply chain carbon footprint while simultaneously enhance product authentication, on-time delivery commitments, asset productivity and cargo integrity and quality,” said Charles Vincent, CEO of ARVIEM, a technology company focusing on real-time end-to-end cargo monitoring services, and one of the founders of the Alliance.

According to the group, over the past four years, smart container technologies have played a crucial role in enabling customs authorities and shipping companies to detect and intercept illicit goods, leading to multiple successful drug seizures. The Alliance will leverage this experience to push for greater adoption and regulatory support.

The launch of the Smart Container Alliance comes at a pivotal moment, coinciding with the most ambitious reform of the EU Customs Union since its inception in 1968. Smart containers are set to play a key role in the shift towards a data-driven approach to customs checks, reinforcing security measures across European ports and beyond.

The Alliance will advocate for the economic and technological benefits of smart container solutions, championing concrete use cases that demonstrate their transformative potential. With its headquarters in Brussels, it will engage with policymakers, industry leaders, and enforcement agencies to support a harmonized approach to trade security. A key focus will be aligning efforts with the European Port Alliance to counter criminal infiltration and reinforce supply chain integrity.

Arviem, Globe Tracker, ORBCOMM, Hoopo, Traxens, and Nexxiot are the founding members of the Smart Container Alliance. The group is seeking other stakeholders to join as it looks to build the focus on technologies and the role it can play in the supply chain.

Following a union complaint about unfair Chinese competition in shipping and shipbuilding, the Trump administration's trade representative has proposed unprecedented access fees for Chinese-operated and Chinese-built ships - fees large enough to change the economics of container shipping in the U.S. market.

China's state-led shipbuilding sector dominates the global market for new tonnage, and China is the leading shipowning nation (by some metrics). Decades of preferential funding and government support have allowed Chinese shipyards to deliver useful tonnage at prices that other international competitors cannot match.

The USTR's action has been coming since at least last year. The White House's office of the U.S. Trade Representative began looking at ways to deploy Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974 to counter China's shipping dominance strategy in 2024. The Act gives the president broad authority to take action against foreign nations that engage in unfair trade practices. It has been used extensively in the past to counter Chinese exporters' practice of selling goods below cost to gain market share.

"The U.S. Trade Representative determined that China’s targeting of the maritime, logistics, and shipbuilding sectors for dominance is unreasonable and burdens or restricts U.S. commerce, and thus is actionable," the USTR wrote in a Federal Register notice Friday.

The proposed fee structure is complex and steep, and the register notice contains several policy alternatives. All would be quite costly for the operator:

- Each U.S. port call for any vessel operated by Chinese interests will be subject to a fee of either a) $1 million per ship for any size vessel, from tugboats up to VLCCs; or b) $1,000 per deadweight tonne - a far lower price.

- Each U.S. port call for each vessel built in China, but operated by non-Chinese interests, will be subject to a fee of up to $1 million, depending on the proportion of Chinese-built ships in that operator's fleet.

- Operators who have newbuilds on order in China will face additional fees of up to $1 million per port call.

- If an operator owns a U.S.-built vessel, each port call of that vessel in the U.S. could generate a refund in an amount of up to $1 million per entry. Specifics for minimum vessel size, cargo volume, voyage distance or port call duration were not provided.

The proposal also includes an ambitious proposal to require that an increasing percentage of U.S. exports be carried on U.S.-flagged tonnage. The schedule would ramp up fast with a one-percent U.S.flagged quota effective immediately, followed by three percent by 2027, five percent by 2028, and 15 percent by 2032. A parallel quota requiring exports on U.S.-built vessels would take effect beginning in 2028, ramping up to an ambitious five percent by 2032.

The USTR did not specify whether the percentage of U.S. export cargo would be measured by tonnage or by dollar value.