FILE – A Chinese flag flies from a ship at the Port of Oakland on Tuesday, April 15, 2025, in Oakland, Calif. (AP Photo/Noah Berger,File) Last month, a ship docked at a refinery in the small town of Reserve, Louisiana, roughly a half-hour drive from New Orleans. The vessel departed from Baltimore, and sailed down the Atlantic coast, loaded with asphalt and other manufacturing material.
On its face, nothing about this is remarkable — but the vessel’s arrival in New Orleans should outrage every American who cares about workers’ rights and national security. That’s because this is not an American ship. Jin Zhou Wan is owned and operated by a Chinese military cut-out. And under normal circumstances and United States law, its journey would be absolutely illegal.
The Jones Act prohibits foreign ships like Jin Zhou Wan from transporting goods between U.S. ports. For more than a century, the Jones Act has been one of the most effective pieces of industrial policy in American history, providing reliable domestic security, protecting maritime workers’ rights and supporting our overall maritime industry and infrastructure.
But since March, spurred by the start of the war with Iran, President Trump has waived Jones Act protections, welcoming foreign-flagged ships with foreign crews into America’s domestic commerce.
President Trump’s presumed intentions here are reasonable. He has been advised that opening domestic shipping lanes to foreign-flagged vessels and crews will bring down prices (particularly energy costs) by increasing supplies during a time of war. Unfortunately, the facts do not bear this out.
The truth is that the waiver has failed to do the two things it was supposed to do. First, it has not opened new routes. According to a Navigistics Consulting report from the first months of the waiver, foreign vessels are largely sailing the same routes as legal Jones Act ships. Second, it has failed to reduce prices. Take gasoline: The report notes that only about 6.5 percent of U.S. gasoline moves on Jones Act vessels to begin with; the vast majority moves via pipeline.
So, it is no surprise that a price analysis covering March 23 to June 1 found no credible evidence that the waiver delivered relief at the pump. In fact, on several routes analyzed — including New Orleans to Port Everglades — foreign-flag rates were actually higher than Jones Act rates.
What has the waiver done?
It has sharply increased traffic at American ports by vessels controlled by Chinese interests: Eighteen percent of vessels using the waiver can be tied to China. It has halted domestic maritime development that’s necessary to economic and military national security, for fear that any U.S. investment will be crushed by cheap foreign competition. And it has hurt American workers by bringing low-paid, untrained foreign labor here — threatening to do to our maritime industry what the North American Free Trade Agreement did to industrial manufacturing.
In the end, neither the consumer nor the crucial American maritime industry benefit from this waiver — but foreign-flag operators certainly do. This is not a partisan issue; in fact, support for the Jones Act is the rare position that still enjoys broad and durable bipartisan support. The Jones Act has strong support from the Democratic Party , and earlier this month, Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) and 51 of his Republican House members sent a letter to President Trump urging him not to extend the waiver.
If the president does not act soon, the arrival of Jin Zhou Wan will no longer be a remarkable occurrence. But the docking of ships owned and operated and built in America, by Americans, in American ports, may become a rare one. We must act now before it is too late.
Chris Westbook is vice president, Gulf Coast, at the Seafarers International Union.
Add as preferred source on Google Tags Atlantic coast Baltimore Chinese military Democratic Party Donald Trump energy costs high gas prices Iran Jin Zhou Wan Jones Act waiver Mike Johnson Mike Johnson (R-La.) Navigistics Consulting New Orleans North American Free Trade Agreement Port Everglades Reserve, Louisiana shipping traffic The Jones Act trump U.S. Maritime Alliance united states US-China tensionsCopyright 2026 Nexstar Media Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
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