White House Releases America’s Maritime Action Plan
The White House on Friday, February 13, released its long-awaited America’s Maritime Action Plan, designed to revitalize the merchant marine and shipbuilding. The sprawling 34-page plan is the follow-up called for in the April 2025 Executive Order and seeks to map out a strategy for reversing what it calls a lack of strategic focus on the maritime sector.
The plan highlights the decline not only of American-flag shipping, which it says undermines the U.S. economy and security, but also the dearth of shipbuilding and maintenance capabilities. By its calculation, the U.S. has a total of 66 shipyards, with only eight active shipbuilding yards and 11 shipyards with build positions. It says 22 yards are dedicated to repairs with drydocking, and 25 are topside repair yards.
“The United States does not have the capacity necessary to scale up the domestic shipbuilding industry to the rate required to meet national priorities,” the plan highlights in its introduction. “This status quo poses significant security and supply chain dependency issues. A self-sustaining domestic shipbuilding sector is critical for national and economic security.”
The sections of the report highlight rebuilding shipbuilding capacity and capabilities, workforce expansion through education and training, and programs to protect what it calls the Maritime Industrial Base. It, however, also highlights that “Delivering on this vision requires more than investment.” It calls for “policies that modernize government procurement processes and streamlining regulation to accelerate shipbuilding and reduce costs.”
In addition to a broad range of incentive programs to support the shipyards, tax breaks, and loan programs, the plan calls for establishing Maritime Prosperity Zones that it says would catalyze investment and growth. It also calls for a U.S. Strategic Commercial Fleet and building on international partnerships to “reduce dependency on unreliable suppliers.”
In addition to following through on the earlier commitments to modernize and rebuild the U.S. Merchant Marine Academy at Kings Point, New York, it also calls for support of the state schools. New workforce recruitment and retention incentives, a Military-to-Mariner program, and other efforts to support the workforce.
It also calls for a U.S. maritime preference requirement and expanded cargo preference requirements. As a stopgap, it wants to bring foreign-built vessels under the U.S. flag to increase the capacity to move U.S. trade internationally.
To fund all the expanded incentives and government support programs, the plan calls for “establishing a universal fee on foreign-built vessels” entering U.S. ports. Based on tonnage arriving, they suggest that at just one cent, it could raise $66 billion over 10 years, while a fee at a rate of 25 cents would yield close to $1.5 trillion, all of which would go to a new Maritime Security Trust Fund. That fund, it says, would “ensure consistent, long-term investment in America’s shipbuilding capacity, fleet expansion, and maritime workforce.” The plan directs the Office of Management and Budget, working with the Department of Transportation, to deliver a legislative proposal for a reliable funding mechanism to sustain all the initiatives outlined in the plan.
It also calls for creating a funding mechanism by closing what it sees as a key loophole. By establishing a Land Port Maintenance Tax (Fee), they would raise funds and ensure that land ports “contribute equitably” to the costs of maintaining and improving critical trade infrastructure. It calls for a “modest tax” (0.125 percent of the value of the merchandise entered the U.S. via land ports), saying it would be the equivalent of the existing Harbor Maintenance Tax (Fee). It asserts that shippers are currently incentivized to land imports at neighboring ports and truck the goods into the United States. Up to 10 percent of the funds would go to a Land Port Maintenance Trust Fund.
The plan is quickly receiving endorsements from key industry groups. “We believe the MAP provides meaningful, long-term solutions aimed at reversing the decline of our U.S. flag fleet and mariner pool, notably by expanding U.S. cargo preference requirements and incentives, providing tax relief for U.S. mariners, and dedicating financial investments to maritime workforce training and domestic shipyard capacity,” said the Marine Engineers’ Beneficial Association (MEBA) in a prepared statement. It says, “These policies are essential to growing the U.S.-flag fleet, creating good-paying American maritime jobs, and ensuring the United States can once again compete against nations that use unfair practices and state subsidies to dominate global shipping and shipbuilding.”
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The plan builds on efforts launched in the U.S. Congress led by Senator Mark Kelly of Arizona and others at the end of 2024. Called the SHIPS for America Act, it also mapped a comprehensive strategy and called for the formation of a White House office to direct maritime policy. The sponsors in the U.S. House and Senate said they would be reintroducing it as the 119th Congress gets underway and as they sought to move forward with committee hearings.
No one disagrees that the U.S. should rebuild its shipbuilding and merchant marine industries. The challenge is funding and long-term commitments required to reverse decades of decline.
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