in effect
This is Executive Order 14269, “Restoring America’s Maritime Dominance,” signed April 9, 2025. It is a presidential directive ordering federal agencies to study the problem and produce plans, reports, and proposed legislation aimed at rebuilding U.S. commercial shipbuilding and the maritime workforce. It creates no new law by itself; it mostly sets tasks and deadlines for officials to deliver recommendations.
The order’s centerpiece is a “Maritime Action Plan” that the President’s national security adviser must submit within 210 days, bundling together roughly two dozen agency assignments due on staggered deadlines (ranging from 30 to 210 days). Concretely, it directs officials to: propose closing a loophole by charging full duties plus a 10 percent service fee on foreign cargo routed through Canada or Mexico to dodge the Harbor Maintenance Fee; consider tariffs on Chinese-made ship-to-shore cranes and other cargo-handling equipment; and draft legislation for a “Maritime Security Trust Fund,” a shipbuilding financial-incentives program, and tax-advantaged “Maritime Prosperity Zones” modeled on the 2017 opportunity zones. It also orders urgent repairs and a long-term modernization plan for the U.S. Merchant Marine Academy, reviews of Navy/Coast Guard shipbuilding, mariner-training reports, and deregulation reviews. The order cites data that the U.S. builds less than one percent of commercial ships while China builds about half.
Directly, this tasks numerous federal agencies (Defense, Commerce, Transportation, Homeland Security, State, Labor, the U.S. Trade Representative, OMB, and others) with producing the required work. Indirectly it targets U.S. shipbuilders, shipyards, ports, and merchant mariners it aims to support, as well as importers who move goods through Canadian or Mexican ports and Chinese manufacturers of cranes and cargo equipment who could face new fees or tariffs. The order explicitly creates no new legal rights and depends on later legislation and available funding to take real effect.