Seatrade-Maritime: US SHIPS Act dead in the water – needs additional push

Published by Seatrade-Maritime

In a late May appearance at The Reagan National Economic Forum, held at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, California, the US Secretary of the Treasury, Scott Bessent, provided some valuable context around the Maritime Action Plan (MAP), released in mid-February, 2026. The gathering brought together high-level attendees from politics, business, and the media.

In his remarks, Bessent summarised various efforts by the Trump administration to project strength- both economic and military-“reflect[ing] the broader principle that President Trump has articulated clearly: economic security is national security.” 

Discussing the MAP specifically, Bessent said: “On maritime strength, President Trump signed an executive order to restore America’s maritime dominance, established a new Office of Maritime and Industrial Capacity at the National Security Council, and called for a Maritime Action Plan to rebuild US shipbuilding capabilities. This is what it looks like to connect industrial capacity, logistics resilience, workforce development, and national security in one strategic frame.”

This sounds well and good, but a closely watched legislative embodiment of MAP, the SHIPS Act (“HR 3151”- introduced into the current Congress in April, 2025), is battling very stiff currents. 

In a late May posting, three days prior to Bessent’s remarks, well-known commentator Brent Sadler, Senior Research Fellow for Naval Warfare and Advanced Technology in the Allison Center for National Security, admitted as much in a posting for the Heritage Foundation, a notable conservative think-tank. Sadler, a US Navy veteran with nearly three decades of service, wrote: “The President has led the effort with executive orders and his personal political capital, notably calling for a maritime revival in his joint session speech to Congress in March 2025. This is commendable, and he’s drawn considerable support on Capitol Hill, but like all good initiatives, it needs an additional push.”

In his recent brief, noting that “America Needs Over 1,300 Commercial Ships to Counter Chinese Economic Coercion and Meet Military Needs”, Sadler described “the stalled legislative efforts to memorialize this generational effort.”  Referring to the April 2025 re-introduction of the SHIPS Act, he opined that: “Yet now, over a year later, Congress is again dead in the water on this historic legislation.”

Sadler, expressing concerns about both national security, upcoming summer vacations on Capitol Hill, and the upcoming “mid-term” elections, made the suggestion, that new legislation building on the SHIPS Act- with a suggested title of Transformative Revival and Urgent Maritime Program, which could be abbreviated as TRUMP, be introduced into Congress. 

Suggested enhancements to the existing legislation would include revised incentives for industry to reinvest in workforce and shipbuilding infrastructure, regulatory relief for local community actions within proposed Maritime Prosperity Zones, and a new Maritime Department “to consolidate the US. Coast Guard, Maritime Administration, Federal Maritime Commission and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration” into one agency “charged with reviving our nation’s commercial maritime sector.”

Another Washington, D.C. based expert and also a former Navy officer, Dr. Steven Wills, a Navalist for the Center for Maritime Strategy, at the Navy League of the United States, has added some colour. In a special report on the SHIPS Act published by specialist news agency “Inside Defense”, Wills alluded to the challenges of reconciling commercial ship construction with defense expenditures.

In his published comments, Wills said: “The SHIPS Act stands a better chance if Congress acts quickly to advance it before the Trump administration releases its fiscal year 2027 budget request…if they can get this going early and make progress early this calendar year, then I think they’ll do better than if it waits and gets kind of commingled with the next defense budget, which is going to be very contentious.”