Sponsors (135)
Introduced May 1, 2025 by Trent Kelly · Last progress May 1, 2025
The bill aims to rebuild U.S. maritime industrial capacity, workforce, and strategic sealift through sustained funding, procurement preferences, and incentives — trading higher taxpayer costs, greater regulatory burdens, and potential trade/political frictions for improved national-security readiness and more domestic maritime jobs.
Maritime industry workers, shipyards, and domestic suppliers will see sustained demand, jobs, and investment as the bill directs funding, credits, procurement preference, and incentives to rebuild U.S. shipbuilding and repair capacity.
The U.S. military, veterans, and national planners will gain stronger strategic sealift, clearer statutory authorities for security fleets, and better crisis responsiveness from coordinated fleet readiness, exercise requirements, and designation frameworks.
Students, current mariners, and maritime employers will benefit from expanded workforce development: upgraded academy facilities, scholarships, training programs, career-retention incentives, and loan/benefit relief to recruit, credential, and retain licensed mariners.
Taxpayers, consumers, and government budgets face higher costs because of new appropriations, subsidies, redirected trade revenues to a trust fund, loan guarantees, and ongoing program funding requirements.
Importers, shippers, exporters, and ultimately consumers may pay substantially higher shipping and trade costs due to cargo-preference mandates, phased requirements to use U.S.-built/crewed vessels (including Chinese-origin goods mandates), penalty taxes on certain foreign-linked vessels, and tighter domestic-content rules.
Targeting ‘foreign entities/countries of concern’ and aligning designations with sanctions risks escalating trade and diplomatic tensions and could trigger trade disputes or retaliatory measures affecting exporters and supply chains.
Based on analysis of 26 sections of legislative text.
Directs federal rebuilding of U.S. shipbuilding and sealift through new governance, a $20B trust fund, tax credits and loans, U.S-content export rules, innovation centers, and mariner benefits.
Rebuilds U.S. commercial shipbuilding, sealift capacity, and the maritime workforce by creating new federal leadership, a dedicated Maritime Security Trust Fund, financial incentives (tax credit and loan programs), procurement and export rules favoring U.S.-built and U.S.-crewed vessels, and targeted investments in innovation, training, and the Merchant Marine Academy. It also tightens definitions and controls over foreign adversary involvement, requires readiness and cable-repair assessments, and expands education and loan-benefit access for credentialed U.S. merchant mariners.