President Donald Trump has extended, for a second time, the waiver that lets foreign-flagged tankers move fuel and other cargo between US ports without triggering the century-old Jones Act. The renewal was finalized Monday and confirmed by a White House official speaking on condition of anonymity, according to Bloomberg, which first reported the extension.
This version comes with more restrictions than the two that preceded it. Every voyage now needs a case-by-case review, with the Pentagon required to consult the US Maritime Administration on whether an American-flagged, -built and -crewed vessel is actually available before a foreign ship gets approved. The list of eligible commodities has also shrunk: gasoline, jet fuel, crude oil, naphtha, liquefied natural gas, soybean oil and fertilizers, down from the sweeping exemption Trump first signed in mid-March.
For the marine insurance market, that combination of tighter eligibility, slower approvals and a smaller pool of qualifying cargo may matter more than the fact that the waiver survived at all.
The Jones Act waiver has never been purely a shipping story. Since Trump first invoked it nearly five months ago to blunt the economic fallout from the Iran conflict, it has changed who is moving fuel around the US coastline, on what kind of tonnage, and under what insurance arrangements.
A waived Jones Act means foreign-flagged tankers, many unfamiliar to US regulators and carrying different P&I club membership and classification histories than the domestic Jones Act fleet, can load and discharge cargo between Gulf Coast, East Coast and West Coast ports. The Cato Institute's waiver tracker found that in the waiver's first 70 days, more gasoline and jet fuel moved by water from the Gulf Coast to the West Coast than in the entire 2020–2025 period combined. That kind of volume shift has left underwriters writing coastal hull and cargo business reassessing exposure on routes that barely existed in their loss models a year ago.
That exposure sits on top of what's happening overseas. The waiver exists because of the war between the US and Iran, which began in late February and has repeatedly disrupted tanker traffic through the Strait of Hormuz. War-risk premiums there have swung sharply, tracking the price of oil almost tick for tick, according to Marsh's global marine chief Marcus Baker. Insurance Business has previously reported on how fast those rates can snap back higher whenever a ceasefire falters. The Jones Act renewal is Washington's attempt to keep domestic fuel supply chains moving while that overseas risk keeps repricing.
The first version of the waiver, issued March 17, applied broadly to a wide assortment of goods and required little more than a notice to US Customs and Border Protection. A first 90-day extension followed in late April, taking the relief through mid-August. In the days before this second renewal, energy secretary Chris Wright said another extension was "quite likely," telling reporters in Texas that the suspensions had "been quite helpful for moving energy around our country."
This time, the administration responded, at least in part, to pressure from domestic shipbuilders and their allies on Capitol Hill. House Speaker Mike Johnson and Majority Leader Steve Scalise, both from Louisiana, were among more than 50 House Republicans who wrote to Trump urging him to let the waiver lapse entirely. The Shipbuilders Council of America has separately warned that keeping the exemption alive puts more than $2.6 billion in active shipyard contracts and expansion projects at risk, and it has flagged that roughly a third of completed waiver voyages have involved vessels with ties to China. That last point matters for underwriters assessing sanctions and flag-state risk, since it adds a national-security dimension to routine due diligence.
The narrower cargo scope and mandatory Pentagon review are the administration's answer to that criticism, without ending the relief outright. White House spokeswoman Taylor Rogers said the extension is meant to "ensure our military and key industries maintain uninterrupted access to critical resources," and pointed to government data showing the waiver has driven a jump in domestic deliveries of gasoline, diesel and jet fuel.
Bloomberg reports the waiver has been used for more than 230 coastal transits by dozens of vessels so far, including a wave of otherwise rare Gulf Coast-to-West Coast energy shipments and a run of liquefied petroleum gas deliveries to Puerto Rico, which has no LNG or LPG tankers of its own in the Jones Act fleet.
A few practical implications stand out for US-based marine underwriters and the brokers who serve energy shippers, refiners and terminal operators:
A smaller cargo list is easier to underwrite. Trimming the waiver to seven commodity categories, instead of the broad "oil and other commodities" language used in March, gives underwriters a cleaner basis for scoping hull and cargo policies tied to waiver-dependent voyages.
Case-by-case Pentagon review adds a timing variable. Voyages that previously moved on general notice to CBP now need individual sign-off. That could slow how fast foreign tonnage enters domestic trade lanes, which charterers and underwriters covering time-sensitive energy cargo will need to build into laycan planning.
War-risk pricing overseas is still setting the tone at home. Premiums for Hormuz transits keep swinging. The World Economic Forum has noted that Washington has already stepped in as a war-risk insurer of last resort for some Gulf transits. As long as that continues, American refiners have reason to keep leaning on the domestic waiver to source fuel closer to home, which keeps demand for coastal hull and cargo cover elevated.
Sanctions and flag-state due diligence carry more weight. With shipbuilders publicly flagging Chinese-linked tonnage among waiver beneficiaries, underwriters writing hull or cargo cover on these voyages have reason to tighten vessel screening before binding.
Trump's use of the waiver is now the longest continuous suspension of Jones Act cabotage rules in the statute's history, and it has revived a long-running argument in Washington over whether the 1920 law still serves its original purpose or has become a bottleneck that gets waived whenever it's inconvenient. Reason's editorial board and the Cato Institute have both argued the episode makes the case for repealing the law, pointing to data showing US-flagged tanker capacity remains fully booked even with foreign vessels absorbing the overflow demand. Shipbuilders and Gulf Coast lawmakers read the same facts differently: they see each extension as one more step toward eroding an industrial base the law is supposed to protect.
Underwriters watching this fight have their own version of the question: how much longer coastal energy cargo keeps moving on unfamiliar foreign tonnage, and how quickly capacity, pricing and underwriting appetite will need to shift if Washington lets the exemption expire after the November midterms.
