Sponsors (4)
The bill strengthens FMC oversight, stakeholder input, data protections, and near-term port funding while increasing confidentiality barriers and compliance requirements that could reduce transparency, impose costs on smaller shippers and carriers, and concentrate agency discretion.
Small businesses, importers, transportation workers, and consumers gain stronger FMC oversight and accountability through improved annual carrier audits, required analyses of trade imbalances, and a mandate to accept and investigate complaints against shipping exchanges, which can identify market manipulation and help reduce shipping disruptions.
Importers, vessel operators, carriers, and small businesses face less redundant reporting because the FMC must reuse timely, usable data already submitted to CBP, Commerce, or USACE, reducing administrative burden and compliance costs.
Port authorities, terminal operators, ocean carriers, and shippers get formal advisory committees that provide direct channels to influence FMC policy on port competitiveness, carrier reliability, and shipper interests, improving stakeholder input into federal decisionmaking.
The public, taxpayers, and parties to proceedings may face reduced transparency because FMC-held investigatory evidence can be withheld unless the Commission votes to disclose it (including a requirement for multiple majority votes), potentially delaying or blocking access in judicial or administrative cases.
Small businesses, shippers, and transportation workers may face higher compliance costs and administrative burdens from new data rules, expanded analyses and disclosures, audits, investigations of shipping exchanges, and additional carrier scrutiny, which can raise operational costs and ultimately shipping prices.
Carriers and other firms risk exposure of proprietary commercial data through expanded reporting, audit disclosures, or public analyses, creating competitive-harm risks for businesses.
Based on analysis of 25 sections of legislative text.
Introduced June 26, 2025 by Dustin Johnson · Last progress December 16, 2025
Creates new rules and authorities for the Federal Maritime Commission (FMC) to oversee ocean shipping. It tightens confidentiality for certain FMC materials, creates two new advisory committees (port and ocean carrier), expands the FMCdefinition of regulated carriers to include firms tied to certain foreign countries, gives the FMC explicit investigatory authority over registered shipping exchanges and a process for the public to submit market-manipulation tips, requires new data governance and rulemaking for containerized freight price indexes, limits duplicate federal data collection, and sets authorized funding for FY2026 and FY2027. Several provisions set deadlines tied to enactment (for example, an ANPRM within 1 year and a final rule within 3 years on price-index data practices, and a 2-year compliance deadline for a shipping-exchange registry). The bill mainly changes how the FMC supervises markets, collects and protects data, organizes stakeholder advice, and enforces anticompetitive conduct rules, with mixed effects on transparency, industry compliance burden, and oversight powers.