Shanghai Waigaoqiao Shipbuilding

The world’s top shipbuilding nation has used unfair practices to chisel out its dominant position in the sector, a months-long American investigation has concluded, leading to the potential for tariffs of some sort on China-built tonnage.

Reuters is reporting that with one week left of the Joe Biden presidency, the US Trade Representative, Katherine Tai, has concluded that China has been using unreasonable tactics to assume global shipbuilding supremacy whereby today it controls two-thirds of the world’s orderbook. Tai was requested by Biden to pursue the investigation in April last year following calls from a number of American unions. 

The report – due to be published soon – cites artificially supressed labour costs, forced technology transfer and intellectual property theft among a raft of accus…