Trump Extends Jones Act Waiver For Another Ninety Days
President Trump has extended for a further ninety days the waiver allowing foreign-flagged ships to carry oil and other commodities between American ports, making it by a wide margin the longest suspension of the coastwise trading laws in their history. The extension was announced on 10 August and takes effect from 17 August, the day after the current waiver expires.
The original waiver was introduced in March, when the conflict involving Iran disrupted global energy flows, and covered oil, fuel, liquefied natural gas, fertiliser and other cargoes for an initial ninety days. It was extended once in late April and has now been extended again, with the structure tightened at each stage. The blanket exemptions of the original instrument have been replaced by voyage-by-voyage review, though accounts differ on which agencies conduct it, with one describing consultation with the maritime administration and another naming the Pentagon alongside it.
The scale of use is substantial. One count puts the number of voyages performed under the waiver at 212 as of 8 August, carrying more than fifty-four million barrels, of which around fifteen million went to the West Coast; another gives the figure as more than two hundred tanker voyages. Either way the waiver has moved a volume of domestic cargo on foreign tonnage that has no precedent, and each of those voyages is one that a Jones Act tanker did not perform.
Opposition from the domestic industry has been forceful and has come from every part of it: the trade association representing American operators, the shipbuilders' council, the marine engineers' union and members of Congress from maritime states have all objected, on the argument that a waiver of this duration stops being an emergency measure and becomes a structural change to the market. The administration's position, articulated through a White House spokeswoman, is that the extension responds to continuing disruption in energy supply.
The industry's underlying concern is about capital rather than about the immediate cargo loss. Jones Act tankers cost several times what an equivalent foreign-built vessel costs, and that premium is only financeable because the operator can count on protected domestic trade for the life of the ship. A waiver renewed twice, running towards a year, tells anyone considering an order that the protection is contingent on political circumstance. The cargo returns when the waiver lapses; the willingness to order a two hundred million dollar tanker against a policy that can be suspended at will does not necessarily return with it.
