A business can shop around for a better shipping rate. It cannot do much about a federal law that makes the ship it needs off-limits.
That is the problem with the Jones Act. The current waiver gives President Donald Trump a chance to show what happens when businesses have more shipping options—and enough time to put them to use.
Trump should work with Congress to suspend the law for a full two years.
Enacted in 1920, the Jones Act restricts the ships that can carry goods between American ports. Those vessels generally must be American-built, American-owned, American-flagged, and American-crewed. The idea is to preserve a domestic maritime industry that can serve the country in an emergency. But the restrictions, though well-intentioned, have also left American buyers and sellers with fewer ways to move goods within their own country.
The current waiver offers a glimpse of what they have been missing.
According to an October 15 analysis by the Cato Institute, foreign-flagged vessels had completed more than 300 voyages under the waiver, carrying over 80 million barrels of cargo since March 17. Deliveries to the West Coast, Alaska, and Hawaii reached 20.7 million barrels in about seven months. That exceeded the previous full-year record of 16.1 million barrels, set in 2024. The earlier record included tanker and barge deliveries, 98 percent of which were renewable diesel.
Puerto Rico tells an even more striking story. In less than seven months, foreign vessels delivered 10.1 million barrels of petroleum products from the mainland, roughly four times the island’s average annual mainland deliveries from 2004 through 2025. Mainland propane shipments reached 1.2 million barrels, more than three times the combined total for those preceding 22 years.
The propane shipments show the problem especially clearly. There are no Jones Act-qualified tankers capable of carrying bulk propane. None. American suppliers have the fuel. American customers want to buy it. Without a waiver, the foreign gas carriers that could connect them are off-limits.
This is not just a story about getting a lower freight bill. It is about making a sale that otherwise might never happen.
The trouble is that businesses cannot count on the relief lasting. The waiver has been issued and extended in 60- and 90-day increments and is currently scheduled to expire November 15. Cato notes that this uncertainty makes it harder to arrange the multiyear contracts businesses often use to secure ships, supplies, and terminal access.
Put yourself in a supplier’s position. Would you commit to a new shipping route, negotiate a long-term contract, or spend money expanding a distribution facility if the government could make the arrangement unworkable a few weeks later?
A lower freight bill matters. But so does a shipping route that finally becomes worth opening, or an expansion a business can finally afford. Those decisions take time—more time than a short waiver allows.
The stakes are especially high in places that depend on shipping. Economists Russell Hillberry and Manuel Jimenez estimated that the Jones Act costs Puerto Rico’s economy $1.4 billion a year, measured in 2016 dollars. Their research, summarized by the Cato Institute, calculated that its restrictions impose a burden equivalent to a 30.6 percent tariff on finished products shipped from the mainland and increase private-sector capital goods costs by 3 percent.
The consequences extend beyond higher shipping bills. When transportation costs rise, businesses may choose different suppliers, invest elsewhere, or abandon plans to expand. Hillberry and Jimenez found evidence consistent with Puerto Rico’s economy shifting away from industries dependent on sea-shipped inputs, although they cautioned that other policies may have contributed.
Supporters of the Jones Act raise a serious objection: The United States needs ships and mariners it can call on in a crisis. But the Jones Act has failed—spectacularly—to achieve that objective. One could argue that it has done just the opposite, undermining the U.S. effort to develop and maintain domestic maritime capacity.
Protecting military readiness does not automatically require keeping the current shipping restrictions intact. The federal government already pays for access to commercially operated ships through the Maritime Security Program. Participating operators receive payments in exchange for making their vessels and transportation resources available during war or a national emergency.
The waiver’s experience is also worth considering. Cato reports that more than 300 voyages had taken place without idling a single Jones Act tanker. That does not prove a longer suspension would have no effect on the domestic fleet. It does suggest foreign ships can meet additional demand without necessarily putting American tankers out of work.
A two-year suspension would give policymakers time to measure the results: new trade, changes in transportation costs, and any effects on domestic shipping capacity and maritime employment.
Congress should authorize the two-year suspension. Existing waiver authority under 46 U.S.C. §501 is tied to national-defense requirements. Businesses should not have to build long-term plans around a succession of emergency exceptions.
The question is not simply how much Americans could save on shipping. It is how much more they could produce, how many new markets they could reach, and how much additional investment they could attract.
Give American businesses two years to find out.
James Carter is a former deputy undersecretary for international affairs at the U.S. Department of Labor and deputy assistant secretary for economic policy at the U.S. Department of the Treasury.
