The issues that confront the maritime industry and the American Merchant Marine are unique to both. Globalization, national security, free trade, economics, tax policy, national transportation policy, labor issues - all can be found within the maritime industry.

The American Maritime Congress has long focused on the issues that directly affect our members - maritime policy, national defense policy, and tax policy.

The following links provide overviews of all the major policy issues that AMC is currently focusing on.

Future Programs

The Jones Act, MSP, and cargo preference are the primary programs that keep the American merchant marine afloat. AMC is committed to educating Congress and the public on those programs, while at the same time exploring new ways to expand our maritime industry. These future programs have the potential to revolutionize our industry, and AMC is playing a key role in ensuring their future success.

Short Sea Shipping (Coastwise Trade) - As our nation’s highways continue to fill up with passenger and freight traffic, the maritime industry has been exploring ways to solve our America’s growing transportation needs. One of the most obvious ways is to rebuild our national coastwise trading industry.

Short Sea Shipping, historically referred to as the coastwise trade, would effectively remove thousands of trucks from major coastal and inland highways. This reduces the burden on our highways and railways, and lowers the cost and time of transportation for shippers. Instead of cargo entering mega-ports on each coast and then loading containers and freight on trucks and rail, the cargo is transshipped to smaller ports for distribution closer to the eventual destination: the consumer.

Coastwise trading is being effectively utilized in Europe today. However, because of unnecessary government regulation and outdated tax policy, short sea shipping has yet to take hold in the United States.

One of the major barriers to short sea shipping is the Harbor Maintenance Tax. This tax, which was designed as a user-fee to pay for the dredging and upkeep of ports across America, taxes each individual cargo that enters a port. When the cargo is transshipped to another destination, that cargo is taxed again. The resulting multiple taxation of the cargo significantly reduces whatever direct savings would have been realized by the shipper.

AMC is working with the Administration and Congress to address this problem and remove all of the barriers to rebuilding an effective coastwise trade in the United States

Liquefied Natural Gas Importation - Reliable access to energy has been a major issue within America the last few years, especially in today’s uncertain world. AMC has been working on a variety of energy related issues with maritime implications. Paramount of these has been the rebuilding of our Liquefied Natural Gas fleet.

America pioneered the ocean transportation of liquefied natural gas back in the 1970s. However, since that time, our share of that trade has dwindled. The last U.S.-Flag LNG tanker left our fleet in 2000.

Since that time, however, the world has changed, and with our renewed emphasis on national and homeland security, the return of America to the LNG trade is critical to our nation’s energy independence and security needs.

Arctic National Wildlife Refuge Oil Exploration - As America continues to find ways to decrease our dependence on foreign sources of energy, it is increasingly important than we utilize sources available at home. AMC and the maritime industry have long advocated the opening of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) to oil exploration. Thanks to modern exploration techniques, ANWR can be explored and the oil removed in a way that both protects the environment and helps to decrease our dependence on overseas oil. Moving the equipment, materials and eventually the oil will require the use of U.S.-Flag shipping, which will provide hundreds of jobs and dozens of ships for American mariners to crew and American operators to run.

Jones Act:

1. No more blanket waivers - During the Hurricane Katrina and Hurricane Rita disaster, the Administration issued blanket temporary waivers of the Jones Act - despite the fact that they weren’t needed. While the maritime industry understands that emergency measures are necessary in emergency situations, the system that has developed for Jones Act waivers works.


2. AMC will continue to educate Congress and the Administration to ensure that in future domestic emergencies, the process and procedures that work are used and no more potentially-damaging blanket waivers be granted.


3. Protecting the Jones Act - While there are no looming threats to the future of the Jones Act on the horizon, it is important to continue the educational process to ensure that future threats don’t begin to grow. Every exception or waiver granted adds up - its is incumbent upon those of us in the maritime industry to ensure the future of the Jones Act by working together to protect it today.

Maritime Security Program:

1. Fully Fund MSP - With the increasing cost of the Global War on Terror and the war in Iraq, funding for defense programs has been a major issue. The Maritime Security Program is critical to the survival of the U.S. Merchant Marine, and it is equally important that AMC and the rest of the industry educate Congress on the need to provide the full funding level authorized for MSP during its annual appropriations process.


2. Last year, MSP saw a 1% cut in its overall program appropriation, along with every other defense program. It is important that Congress understand that short-changing MSP in the short term will have far more expensive consequences in the future.


3. Expand MSP - The Maritime Security Program is one of the most efficient ways for the government to ensure it has the adequate sealift it needs at cost-effective levels. With many Military Sealift Command and MARAD Ready Reserve Force ships reaching the end of their useful lives, it is important that we find a way to replace that lost capacity and that we do so in a way that represents the best value to the taxpayer.

The best way to do that would be to further expand the Maritime Security Program. By replacing lost government-owned capacity with commercially owned and operated militarily useful vessels, you support both the operators and vessels - keeping more ships under the U.S.-Flag and more companies in America - and you support the seafarer - providing a stable employment base for our merchant mariners.

Maritime Administration Funding - The Maritime Administration is the voice of the maritime industry within the Executive branch, and is our primary governmental advocacy body. It is critical that MARAD has the funding it needs to support its many programs, as well as for its care of the Ready Reserve Force and National Defense Reserve Fleet.

Transportation Worker Identification Credential (TWIC) - As Congress works to tighten security at our nation’s ports and on our oceans and inland waterways, it is important that they balance the need for security with the burdens placed on the industry and on our merchant mariners. The Transportation Worker Identification Credential required by the Maritime Transportation Security Act of 2003 has been in the planning stages for over five years. Despite how long the government has had to work on this program, there are still major problems with the regulations in development by the Department of Homeland Security.

AMC will be working with partners across the maritime industry, maritime labor and the shipper community to ensure that the regulations adopted for the implementation of TWIC make sense, do not place unreasonable restrictions on shippers, operators and mariners, and don’t put us at a disadvantage to our foreign competition.

Mariner Tax Reform - Nearly every single major maritime power provides tax incentives for merchant mariners to enable their mariners to compete against serious worldwide competition. The United States, however, does not. This places our mariners at a disadvantage against equally or often lesser trained crew in the global marketplace. Instead of creating incentives for shipping companies to place vessels under the U.S.-Flag or hire American mariners to crew their vessels, our mariner tax policy makes it harder for our internationally operating industry to compete.

A comprehensive tax reform that provides incentives for the use of American merchant seafarers’ would be an important step in leveling the international playing field and creating new job opportunities for Americans in the U.S. Merchant Marine.

Liquefied Natural Gas Importation Incentives - America continues to look for alternative energy sources to decrease our reliance upon sources of energy imported from unstable regions of the world. Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) is one of the most promising of those alternative energy sources. However, despite the increasing demand for natural gas in the United States, there are currently only five terminals that are capable of receiving imports of LNG from our trading partners in the Caribbean, East Asia, and around the globe.

Thanks to widespread propaganda campaigns to demonize LNG importation, it has become very difficult to site LNG import terminals. In addition, despite having pioneered the carriage of LNG in the 1970s, America has lost its fleet of LNG tankers and hundreds of LNG trained mariners have been forced out of the LNG sector. AMC has been and will continue to work to educate the public and Congress on the importance - both to our economic and our homeland security - of having American mariners onboard LNG tankers bringing this vital resource into our country.

LNG is a security sensitive cargo, and must be treated as such. One easy way to protect our LNG tankers and our LNG terminals and those who live close to them is to remove any questions about who crews these vessels - using American mariners, vetted and credentialed by the Coast Guard and the Department of Homeland Security, we can be sure that those who bring this security sensitive cargo into America are highly trained, qualified and with the best interests of our country at heart.

AMC will be working to ensure that Congress and the Administration understand the need for American mariners in the LNG industry, and to identify incentives that could help revitalize this sector of our maritime industry.

Harbor Maintenance Tax Reform - The biggest barrier to seeing Short Sea Shipping (coastwise trade) begin to flourish in America is the Harbor Maintenance Tax. Educating Congress on the need to reform the tax so that transshipped cargo between US ports isn’t subject to double taxation is an agenda item for AMC.

Great Lakes Dredging - Inadequate dredging of ports in the Great Lakes are costing Americans millions of dollars each year. Vessels on the Lakes are unable to operate at full capacity, meaning they leave behind hundreds of thousands of tons of cargo each year - requiring more trips, more fuel, more wear and tear, and a greater environmental impact.

It is important that we work to remove any and all obstacles to dredging our ports and harbors on the Great Lakes.

Cargo Preference / Food Aid Issues

1. Cargo preference waivers - The U.S. maritime industry was greatly concerned that blanket waiver authority contained in the 2004 Iraq war supplemental budget bill would be interpreted as a go-ahead to waive the application of cargo preference laws for both military support and food aid shipments to the Middle East. At the urging of the maritime industry, language was included during floor debate clarifying that U.S.-flag shipping requirements would be followed.


2. Indeed, there were several instances early in 2003 in which USAID contemplated transporting food aid cargoes to Afghanistan, Yemen and Zambia on foreign-flag vessels despite the fact that U.S.-flag vessels were available at rates found fair and reasonable. USAID attempted to invoke its "emergency" waiver powers under 7 U.S.C 1722(a) even though the U.S.-flag vessels available would have provided the same or faster delivery dates. Although the legislative history of USAID "emergency" authority makes clear that Congress did not intend that section of the law to be used to waive cargo preference requirements, it has been used for this purpose.


3. WTO Negotiations " Although the Doha Round of trade talks ended earlier this year with no major changes in food aid, World Trade Organization Committee (WTO) negotiations on agriculture remain an important issue. Recently, in these WTO negotiations, a number of other countries, particularly those in the European Union, have been seeking to eliminate "in-kind" food aid for non-emergency uses, whether in the form of loans or grants. Instead, they would require that American taxpayers give cash for food aid through the World Food Organization in Rome, which would then take our money and use it to buy food aid from other sources including our strongest agriculture competitors. Such a policy, were it to prevail, would eliminate about 3 million metric tons annually of U.S. food aid shipments, and, thus, purchases of American farm products. It is critical that U.S. trade negotiators not give in to this pressure in negotiations.


4. Cash Only Programs - During the few years, the administration has attempted to convert a portion of the PL-480 Food for Peace program from an in-kind food donation to a direct cash donation to the recipients. AMC, along with our allies in the agriculture and charitable organization sectors, strongly urged the Administration and Congress not to cut funding for PL-480 by moving to a cash-only program. Not only does a cash program already exist under federal law, moving to cash only would damage the economic benefits that are an inherent part of food aid - by purchasing U.S. grown commodities and shipping the cargo on U.S.-Flag vessels, we are able to accomplish the goals of providing stable food supplies for developing countries while also benefiting our own economy and ensuring the seafarer and ship base necessary for our national and homeland security. Fortunately, Congress has recognized the value of in-kind food aid and has not cut funding to pay for a cash-only program. AMC will continue working to educate Congress on the continued need and value of in-kind food aid.