The Department of Justice reports that four Chinese shipping container manufacturing companies and seven Chinese executives have been indicted for conspiring to restrict the output and fix the prices of nearly all of the world’s standard unrefrigerated shipping containers for more than four years. The DOJ asserts that this conspiracy roughly doubled the prices of standard shipping containers between 2019 and 2021, significantly increasing the manufacturers’ profits during the COVID-19 pandemic and global supply chain crisis.
According to a DOJ press release, the conspirators agreed to restrict their output of standard dry shipping containers by various means, including (1) limiting the number of shifts and hours that each production line could run per day, (2) installing 87 video surveillance cameras on 49 production lines to ensure these limits were not exceeded, (3) not building any new container manufacturing factories, and (4) establishing a fund that included a mechanism to penalize financially any cheating on the output-restriction agreement.
Later the conspirators agreed to restrict how many containers they would manufacture for particular customers, including container lessors, shipping lines, and logistics companies based in the U.S., Europe, China, and elsewhere, and to cap the total cargo volume of containers that they produced.
The DOJ states that the indictment charges the defendants with a conspiracy in restraint of trade in violation of Section 1 of the Sherman Antitrust Act. Such violations carry a maximum penalty of a $100 million fine for corporations as well as 10 years in prison and a $1 million criminal fine for individuals. The fines may be increased to twice the gain derived from the crime or twice the loss suffered by the victims if either amount is greater than the statutory maximum.
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