White House Extends Jones Act Waiver in Longest Suspension in Law’s History

By Jarrett Renshaw

Aug 10 (Reuters) – President Donald Trump has extended for 90 days a waiver allowing foreign-flagged ships to transport oil and other commodities between U.S. ports, but imposed new limits after shipbuilders and their allies in Congress argued the policy was undermining the domestic maritime industry, the White House said.

The extension, finalized on Monday, comes as the war with Iran disrupts global crude flows and pushes up fuel costs, increasing pressure on the administration to find ways to ease transportation bottlenecks and keep gasoline and other energy prices from rising further.

The 90-day extension ensures the U.S. military and key industries maintain uninterrupted access to critical resources, White House spokeswoman Taylor Rogers said on Monday.

“Data shows the waiver has driven a significant increase in domestic deliveries of essential products such as gasoline, diesel, and jet fuel,” Rogers said in a post on the social media platform X.

Under the new terms, the administration has narrowed the scope of the relief, requiring individual voyages to undergo case-by-case review rather than allowing foreign ships to receive blanket exemptions from the Jones Act, a White House official confirmed.

The Jones Act requires cargo moving between U.S. ports to be carried on ships built in the U.S., owned by U.S. companies and crewed by American workers, and the waiver aims to lower gas prices by increasing shipping flexibility and reducing transport bottlenecks.

The waiver was set to expire on August 16 without the extension. It is the longest suspension of the more than a century-old law in its history.

(Reporting by Jarrett Renshaw, editing by Michelle Nichols and Deepa Babington)

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This article contains reporting from Reuters, published under license.

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