President Trump must soon decide whether to continue allowing foreign ships to transport fuel to U.S. ports, a policy opposed by Democrats and Republicans who say it lowers gas prices at the expense of American jobs.
In one of his most dramatic moves to slash gas costs, which rose sharply at the outset of the Iran war, Mr. Trump waived an arcane 1920 law governing the shipment of fuel in the U.S.
The law, known as the Jones Act, requires that all goods shipped between U.S. ports must be carried on vessels that are American-built, -flagged, -owned and -crewed. Mr. Trump temporarily lifted the ban on foreign vessels on March 17. The administration announced a 90-day extension on April 24, with the second waiver taking effect May 18. The waiver is set to expire Aug. 16 unless Mr. Trump extends it a third time.
Democrats howled that the Jones Act suspension stole Americans’ jobs and posed a national security threat. Republicans fumed that it delivered a blow to “American jobs, manufacturing and investment.”
Since Mr. Trump waived the Jones Act through July 9, roughly 40 million barrels of fuel, including crude oil, gasoline and jet fuel, have been transported by 162 foreign vessels, according to the most recent data from the Maritime Administration, an agency of the Department of Transportation. Propane and fertilizer were also shipped.
More than 70% of the ships originated from the Gulf Coast and headed to ports across the country, including Los Angeles, San Francisco, Linden, New Jersey, and Delaware City, Delaware.
Gas prices have dropped since the Iran war cut off about one-fifth of the world’s oil supply, but not at the pace Mr. Trump would like.
Gas prices also ticked up slightly after hostilities erupted between the U.S. and Iran in the Strait of Hormuz.
Reps. Rick Larsen of Washington and Salud Carbajal of California, two Democrats on the House subcommittee that oversees maritime transportation, said Mr. Trump’s policy outsourced American jobs and threatened national security.
“This broad waiver has allowed foreign ships, paying foreign taxes and employing foreign mariners to carry domestic cargo,” they wrote in a letter to Mr. Trump.
They said the waiver has “no benefit” for Americans.
The Republican Party was not any kinder.
In a June 30 letter to Mr. Trump, more than 50 Republicans urged him to let the waiver lapse and restore the status quo of using only the small fleet of American ships to deliver oil to U.S. ports.
Republicans led by House Speaker Mike Johnson and Majority Leader Steve Scalise, both of Louisiana, say the waiver undercuts domestic shipping companies.
“The Jones Act waiver has become a loophole exploited by adversarial countries to erode America’s maritime dominance,” they said, adding that foreign-flagged vessels were operating under the waiver even in circumstances where U.S.-flagged vessels were available.
Keeping the waiver in place would give him a mechanism to lower gas prices ahead of the midterm elections but would open him up to criticism that he is doing so by sacrificing American jobs to foreign competitors.
The White House declined to say what Mr. Trump will do.
“New data compiled since the initial Jones Act waiver was issued revealed that significantly more supply was able to reach U.S. ports faster,” White House spokeswoman Taylor Rogers said in a statement to The Washington Times. “The president issued another 90-day waiver extension to provide both certainty and stability for the U.S. and global economies.”
“President Trump will continue to unleash American energy dominance, strengthening America’s energy independence and delivering economic relief to the American people,” she said.
The waiver has also opened up Puerto Rico to domestic energy producers. Puerto Rico’s power grid heavily relies on imported fossil fuels, such as propane, a liquefied petroleum gas, because it does not produce petroleum domestically. Moving fuel into Puerto Rico requires specialized vessels that transport the liquefied gas at specific temperatures.
Very few such vessels are available in the U.S. fleet. Since Mr. Trump imposed the waiver, 49% more propane has been shipped from the mainland U.S. to Puerto Rico in the first 80 days than in the 22 years from 2004 to 2025. In the first 80 days of the waiver, 542,000 barrels of propane were shipped to Puerto Rico, compared with 364,000 barrels from 2004 to 2025.
The waiver is one of several steps the Trump administration has taken to tame energy prices, as the Iran war chokes oil supplies and boosts domestic energy costs. Mr. Trump in March ordered 172 million barrels of oil to be released from the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve and temporarily lifted sanctions on the purchase of Russian oil.
The average price of a gallon of regular gasoline on Tuesday was $3.85. That was up nearly $0.07 from a week ago but down from $4.07 per gallon last month. On the same day last year, the average cost of gasoline was $3.15 per gallon, according to AAA.
How much waiving the Jones Act affected gas prices is hotly debated.
The American Maritime Partnership, a coalition of vessel owners and operators, shipboard and shoreside workers, shipbuilders and repair yards, studied shipping rates since the waiver went into effect through June 1. It concluded that foreign-flagged vessels charged the same or more than U.S. vessels to transport fuel, resulting in no savings for consumers.
According to the AMP, foreign vessels charged:
• $0.097 per gallon to ship gasoline from New Orleans to Port Everglades compared with $0.091 per gallon for U.S. vessels.
• $0.153 per gallon to ship crude from Corpus Christi, Texas, to Philadelphia compared with $0.156 per gallon for U.S. vessels.
• $0.04 per gallon to ship a fuel product from Richmond, California, to Los Angeles, compared with $0.02 per gallon for U.S. vessels.
AMP also found that U.S.-flag vessels were available for 86.5% of qualifying voyages but were bypassed in favor of foreign vessels. Among foreign vessels shipping fuel to American ports, the largest single-country share — 18.5% — is held by China, one of the strongest U.S. adversaries.
“Every day this waiver continues, we are trading away decades of investment in our domestic maritime industrial base for a policy that the data shows isn’t achieving its stated purpose,” said Jennifer Carpenter, president of the American Maritime Partnership. “It’s time to end the waiver and recommit to the America First policy that puts the U.S. mariners and U.S. vessels first.”
AMP said U.S. vessels have lost business or had contracts canceled because of the waiver.
Still, it is difficult to measure the impact the waiver has had on gas prices, said Colin Grabow, associate director of the Herbert A. Stiefel Center for Trade Policy Studies at the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank. Yet there is evidence that lifting the ban on foreign ships has saved money.
“Presumably, each one of those voyages that have taken place under the Jones Act waiver represents a cost savings. If there were equal costs or cheaper solutions, those voyages would not have happened,” he said. “Companies see it as a cheaper solution.”
Although Mr. Grabow acknowledged that it is difficult to measure how much of those savings have filtered down to consumers, he said the waiver allowed oil and gas companies to use domestic oil because it is cheaper to transport it through U.S. ports on foreign vessels rather than import foreign oil.
Brian Mandell, executive vice president of marketing and commercial for Phillips 66, acknowledged as much during the company’s first-quarter corporate earnings call on April 29. He told investors the waiver allowed Phillips 66 to “displace international crudes with domestic grades” and to move gasoline from the Gulf Coast to the West Coast more quickly.
The debate over the Jones Act comes as Mr. Trump seeks to revive the American shipbuilding industry. In February, he unveiled America’s Maritime Action Plan, pledging to invest hundreds of billions to reverse the decline of U.S. shipbuilding.
Currently, the U.S. fleet accounts for less than 1% of global commercial ships, while 64% of new ships are built in China. Part of the reason is that it is more expensive to build and crew a U.S. ship than a foreign competitor’s ship.
The cost of building a medium-range oil tanker in Asia ranges from $48 million to $51 million. In the U.S., which has not built an oil tanker since 2017, it costs as much as $250 million, according to a Cato study.
The higher cost in the U.S. is because of domestic supply chain fragmentation, specialized labor shortages and infrastructure constraints, according to the study.
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