Sponsors (29)
Official title: Support the national defense and economic security of the United States by supporting vessels, ports, and shipyards of the United States and the U.S. maritime workforce.
Introduced April 30, 2025 by Mark Edward Kelly · Last progress April 30, 2025
The bill prioritizes U.S. maritime and strategic sealift capacity — strengthening domestic shipbuilding, workforce, and resilience — but does so by centrally steering funding and procurement toward U.S. suppliers and by creating new taxes, designations, and reporting requirements that will raise costs for shippers and taxpayers, increase regulatory and diplomatic friction, and add administrative burdens.
Military personnel, veterans, and taxpayers: U.S. strategic sealift and wartime/emergency readiness are strengthened by prioritizing a larger U.S.-flag commercial fleet, clearer agency authorities, and coordinated civil‑military planning to ensure timely movement of forces and materiel.
Shipbuilders, maritime suppliers, and transportation workers: Domestic shipbuilding, repair, and related manufacturing demand would increase, creating jobs and strengthening the U.S. industrial base through procurement preferences, loan guarantees, and Buy America requirements.
Mariners, students, and academy graduates: Expanded workforce programs, training, recruitment, retention pay/benefits, PSLF/VA eligibility, noncompetitive hiring pathways, and academy modernization create clearer career pipelines and incentives to join and remain in the U.S. merchant marine.
Taxpayers, importers, consumers, and small businesses: Prioritizing U.S.-built vessels, cargo preference rules, penalty tonnage taxes, and redirected receipts will raise shipping and import costs, likely increasing prices for consumers and operating costs for businesses.
Taxpayers and the federal budget: New offices, appropriations, loan guarantees, trust‑fund allocations, and redirected customs/tonnage revenues increase federal spending and fiscal exposure, reducing general Treasury receipts and crowding other priorities.
Carriers, global shipyards, small businesses, and trading partners: Broad discretionary authority to designate 'foreign entities/shipyards of concern,' centralization of waiver decisions, and new designation-triggered penalties create regulatory uncertainty, potential politicization, and risk of uneven or opaque enforcement.
Based on analysis of 24 sections of legislative text.
Creates a White House maritime coordinator and board, a Maritime Security Trust Fund, new shipbuilding finance and domestic-content rules, fleet readiness exercises, innovation hubs, and mariner education benefits.
Establishes a coordinated federal strategy and funding tools to rebuild U.S. commercial and military sealift, shipbuilding, repair, and the maritime workforce. It creates a White House Maritime Security Advisor and Maritime Security Board, a Maritime Security Trust Fund, domestic shipbuilding and component preference rules for certain exports, new financing and loan programs for ship construction, a Strategic Commercial Fleet chapter, and modernization requirements for the Merchant Marine Academy. Directs interagency planning and exercises, creates regional incubators and a Center for Maritime Innovation, expands workforce and education benefits for merchant mariners, requires studies on cable-repair capability and fleet control in crisis, and phases in domestic-content requirements for crude-oil export shipping to grow the U.S. fleet and industrial base.