Mediterranean Shipping Co. (MSC) is the latest carrier to change vessel deployments for its US network ahead of new port fees on Chinese-built ships, signaling to its shippers that the carrier will absorb, if not entirely avoid, the cost of the new fees.

In a customer advisory sent Thursday, CEO Soren Toft said MSC “proactively restructured its global vessel network” in response to the US Trade Representative’s fees on Chinese-built or -operated ships calling US ports. The fees, scheduled to start Oct. 14 and based on the higher of either gross tonnage or container volume, amount to an extra $300 to $600 per container by various estimates.

“This internal adjustment ensures full alignment with applicable US trade regulations while maintaining the reliability and efficiency of MSC’s service offerings,” Toft said in the notice.

MSC’s announcement comes after CMA CGM said Wednesday that it doesn’t plan to charge customers shipping to the US to cover the cost of the new fees after removing Chinese-built ships from its US service networks. China’s Cosco Shipping, which will not be able to avoid the fee due its ownership, also does not plan to levy a surcharge, according to a carrier executive and Cosco customer familiar with the carrier’s plan.

Thirty-five of the 266 individual ships operated by MSC that called the US during the last six months were built in China, according to data from Sea-web, a sister company of the Journal of Commerce within S&P Global.

While many of those were likely ad hoc calls, some of MSC’s Chinese fleet that was in regular rotation to the US now appear to be deployed to non-US trades, Sea-web and vessel schedules show.

The 9,411-TEU MSC Jeongmin, which has made 154 calls to the US over the last five years, the last of which was to Los Angeles in August as part of the carrier’s California Express service from Europe, is now part of the Levante Express service between the Mediterranean and northern Europe. The 8,496-TEU MSC Ivory Coast, which made 13 US calls over the last five years, is now listed in the rotation for the carrier’s West Mediterranean-Red Sea service.

MSC’s fleet composition offers versatility in its deployments. According to Sea-web data, about half of MSC’s active container fleet is from South Korean shipbuilders, while Chinese vessels make up about a quarter of its fleet.

However, MSC has an additional 106 vessels, with an aggregate capacity of 1.9 million TEUs, on order or under construction at Chinese shipyards, with no known orders from South Korean yards on its books, Sea-web data shows.