Project 2025 Tracker / What’s done, what’s next

26. Trade · Notable · Contested — excluded from counts

Grant Jones Act exemptions unilaterally wherever allowed

Partially done

809 26. Trade · from “The Case for Free Trade”

“The next conservative Administration should unleash American potential by unilaterally enacting Jones Act exemptions wherever allowed, as currently happens most years during hurricane season, and working with Congress to repeal the Jones Act.”

What has happened

  1. Partially done

    A blanket Jones Act waiver was issued unilaterally by the executive and is in force. The Department of Homeland Security issued it under 46 U.S.C. 501(a) on 2026-03-17, on the Department of War's determination that it was necessary "in the interest of national defense to address an immediate adverse effect on military operations" — the same national-defense instrument the Quote's own example, the hurricane-season waiver, is granted under. MARAD's statutory 501(c) reports are the record: 91 daily reports running 2026-04-08 to 2026-09-01, each listing foreign-flag vessels moving domestic cargo between U.S. ports. The 2026-05-29 report alone carries gasoline, ultra-low-sulfur diesel, VGO, Bakken crude, ethanol and anhydrous ammonia moving Ferndale–Portland, Beaumont–Marcus Hook, Houston–Long Beach, Corpus Christi–New Orleans and Houston–San Juan, with shippers reciting the waiver's date, its statutory basis and the CBP message implementing it (CSMS #68096516). On the separate small-vessel side, MARAD's own program page states the outcome in words: "MARAD approves most waiver requests." `partial` and not `done`: the Quote's second limb — working with Congress to repeal the Jones Act, carried at #2101 — is untouched, and "wherever allowed" is open-ended with no allowlisted statement that the sweep is complete.

  2. Not started

    For the first year the record ran the other way: the administration moved to reinforce the coastwise regime rather than to exempt from it. Executive Order 14269 ordered a Maritime Action Plan to make United States-flagged and built vessels commercially competitive, USTR's Section 301 action on China's maritime, logistics and shipbuilding sectors imposed fees on Chinese-built vessels calling at U.S. ports, and a presidential memorandum of 2026-08-13 set out rebuilding the U.S. shipbuilding industrial base. The only exemptions flowing were the 235 Maritime Administration notices soliciting comment on individual small-passenger-vessel waiver applications under 46 U.S.C. 12121 — a statutory, applicant-driven process that predates the window and continued unchanged.

Research log

What was searched, and what didn’t count as evidence

Research notes

  • Contested Recommendation from “The Case for Free Trade”, and the executive half of the ask whose legislative half is #2101 (repeal the Jones Act, not started). The two share a record and were leveled together.
  • Correction, 2026-09-03 (read-queue ticket 04). The earlier reading — “no new Jones Act exemption was granted”, rested on a Federal Register negative — was wrong. The negative itself holds: a conditions[term]="Jones Act" waiver query from 2026-01-01 still returns zero Federal Register documents. It does not reach the instrument. A § 501(a) national-defense waiver is a DHS administrative act made on the Secretary of War’s determination and is reported to Congress, not published in the Federal Register — the class the playbook names under “Some instruments never enter the Federal Register”. The record that does carry it is MARAD’s statutory publication under 46 U.S.C. 501(c)(1)(G), which the earlier pass did not reach because www.maritime.dot.gov was recorded as a 403 wall; it opens to the full browser header set.
  • The 12121 reading in the earlier note survives on its own terms — that process is statutory, pre-existing and applicant-driven, so continuing it is not a step this administration took. It is not what carries the item to partial; the § 501(a) waiver is. MARAD’s own 2025-06-30 page (“MARAD approves most waiver requests”) does, however, retire the earlier note’s separate claim that “MARAD’s determinations are not published, so the notices show applications being processed, not exemptions being enacted”: the outcome is on the record even where individual determinations are not.
  • Still missing, and worth one more pass: the waiver document itself, or the White House announcement of 2026-03-17. The date and the statutory basis come from shippers’ recitals inside MARAD’s own § 501(c) report — Primary evidence of the fact recited, and corroborated across dozens of independent filings, but not the instrument. presidential-actions.ndjson carries nothing on 2026-03-17, the whitehouse.gov briefings index reaches only recent items, and the CBP CSMS bulletin (content.govdelivery.com/bulletins/gd/USDHSCBP-68096516) is off the allowlist.
  • The MARAD notice cited on the first event was read in full at govinfo to confirm it is a request for comments on an application, not a grant.
Action
issue
Object
Jones Act exemptions
ID
2119