Port of Marseille’s Castaner warns about US trade confrontation with China

The President of the Marseille Seaport, Christophe Castaner, warned that the Trump administration’s trade confrontation with China is not succeeding because, in 2025, Beijing is prepared to fight back.

In a speech to the International Propeller Club (IPC) convention at Lyon, France, on October 13th, Castaner said: “Beijing seems to be ready for direct confrontation. There is a new reality. When President Trump announced an additional 100% tariff on the imports of Chinese origin, the result was that on Friday, there was a drop of 2.7% on Wall Street, and now there is a new relationship between China and the USA.”

Castaner said that he recognized that there were many US citizens attending the International Propeller Club convention and that he felt it was important that they understand that China is a rising economic power in the world and that the Wall Street reaction to Trump’s threat to raise tariffs on China by 100% reflects the weakness of the United States. That weakness is reflected by the fact that the United States is increasingly a debtor country relying on countries like China to underwrite its debts and deficits: “Let's speak about the situation with the USA, the taxes, provocation, et cetera. And there is a Chinese capacity for recovery, and I would like to also speak about the 765 billion US dollars debt held by China.”

That reality is changing the way countries are conducting their international trade: “In short, this confrontation between two power models, industrial and technological, is reconfiguring investment flows, accelerating relocation policies, and undermining the predictability of trade routes. It is withdrawing alliances, pushing companies to diversify their supplies and requiring (ports like Marseille) more than ever to embody the stability, reliability, and logistical sovereignty of the nations they serve.”

He added, “The rivalry between Washington and Beijing has become one of the defining features of the new globalization with profound consequences for all.”

IMO and Green Shipping

In contrast to the Trump administration’s opposition to renewable energy and its opposition to adoption of reduced emission goals for ships proposed by the United Nation’s International Maritime Organization (IMO), Castaner said the rest of the world recognizes the threat posed by global warming and supports green shipping: “Green shipping corridors, these new corridors are becoming vectors of stability, sustainability and balanced connectivity between continents, corridors where green and diverse alternative fuels and decarbonization of port logistics (create) a circular economy. These are the challenges we have to face.”

The result is “The Port of Marseille, which I chair, is asserting itself. This Mediterranean gateway has chosen to build its resilience on three complementary pillars: an energy hub, a logistics hub, and a digital hub. The first pillar is energy. We know that the decarbonization of the maritime industry has not yet found a single model. Alternative technologies and hydrogen biofuels, shore-based electricity, each have their own strengths and constraints. Marseille is already a key center for green corridors capable of testing, improving innovations along identified routes in partnership with ship builders and shipping companies.”

The second pillar is logistics: “The port has state-of-the-art infrastructure designed to accommodate all types of ships and goods and then transport them efficiently within a multimodal inland river pipeline corridor.”

Just as an example, the Port of Lyon is now engaged in a major upgrade of its cargo handling facilities so as to handle additional container moves by water to and from Marseille, according to Jean Christian Vialelles, President of the Propeller Club of Lyon, and the Port of Lyon’s ship-to-shore crane capacity is up to 28 containers per hour.

Castaner said the third pillar of the Port of Marseille strategy is digital: “The internet strategy connects us directly to the industrial economies of Northern Europe through land and river transport, but also on the digitization of trade. The third pillar is finally digital. Marseille is a major landing point for submarine cables connecting Europe to India, the Middle East, Africa, and Asia. We are developing an internal digital corridor between Marseille to Frankfurt and Berlin to strengthen our data sovereignty, ensure cybersecurity,) host critical infrastructure.”

The result is: “These three hubs, energy, logistics, and digital, are not isolated products. They are designed as an integrated system.”