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With gas prices stubbornly above $4 per gallon and midterm elections eight months away, the White House moved Thursday to extend one of its most consequential domestic energy tools. President Trump announced a 90-day extension of the Jones Act shipping waiver, giving foreign-flagged vessels continued access to U.S. domestic sea lanes through mid-August and keeping
With gas prices stubbornly above $4 per gallon and midterm elections eight months away, the White House moved Thursday to extend one of its most consequential domestic energy tools. President Trump announced a 90-day extension of the Jones Act shipping waiver, giving foreign-flagged vessels continued access to U.S. domestic sea lanes through mid-August and keeping a critical supply line open as Iran’s closure of the Strait of Hormuz continues to drain global energy markets.
The trump announcement today was framed as a direct response to the Hormuz supply shock — but the political math behind it is just as important as the logistics.
The Jones Act, formally the Merchant Marine Act of 1920, requires that all goods transported by water between U.S. ports be carried on vessels that are U.S.-flagged, U.S.-built, and U.S.-owned. It is one of the oldest protectionist maritime laws in American history, and it has long been a flashpoint between domestic shipping unions and energy companies seeking cheaper transport options.
Trump’s ship waiver temporarily suspends those restrictions across a sweeping list of commodities: coal, crude oil, refined petroleum products, natural gas, natural gas liquids, fertilizer, and other energy derivatives. By allowing foreign tankers to legally operate between American ports — from Gulf Coast refineries to Northeast terminals, from Pacific pipeline hubs to distribution ports serving communities along the California coast, including supply chains serving the Bay Area and markets around Berkeley — the waiver effectively enlarges the domestic fleet overnight.
The extension adds 90 days to an existing waiver that had been set to expire on May 17, pushing the authorization through to mid-August 2026.
The waiver is not a symbolic gesture. Since the first 60-day exemption was issued in March, more than 40 tankers have used or are committed to using the authorization. The White House says the waiver has increased the availability of domestic cargo transport capacity by more than 70 percent and has already enabled more than 9 million barrels of U.S. oil to reach domestic ports that might otherwise have faced critical supply shortfalls.
Those figures exist against a backdrop of staggering global loss. Iran’s effective closure of the Strait of Hormuz has removed approximately 13 million barrels of crude oil and refined product from world markets every day. The IEA has called it the “largest supply disruption in the history of the global oil market.” Brent crude peaked at $126 per barrel in the weeks following the conflict’s outbreak, and while prices have pulled back from that peak, they remain elevated and volatile.
The ship waiver berkeley-and-beyond supply chain argument is simple: the U.S. cannot replace what is being lost through Hormuz. But it can move its own domestic production more efficiently, reducing regional bottlenecks and shaving cents off the consumer price at the pump.
The trump announcement today lands in a climate of deep public frustration. A University of Michigan consumer sentiment survey this month recorded the index falling to an all-time low of 47.6, with inflation expectations for the next 12 months jumping to 4.8 percent. Gas has been above $4 per gallon since mid-March. The Energy Secretary has publicly acknowledged that $3 gas may not return until 2027 — a timeline that runs well past the November midterm elections.
Polling has turned punishing. A recent survey found that 55 percent of Republican voters, 82 percent of independents, and 95 percent of Democrats hold Trump responsible for the gas price surge. The president’s approval rating on inflation handling has dropped to 34 percent — a number that haunts Republican House candidates in swing districts and has begun reshaping the Senate electoral map.
The 90-day extension is, among other things, a direct bid to close that gap before voters go to the polls. By keeping foreign tankers in American waters through mid-August, the White House is buying time — for diplomatic talks with Iran to potentially reopen the Strait, for oil prices to moderate, and for consumer sentiment to recover before campaign season peaks.
Not everyone is celebrating. The domestic maritime industry — a constituency the Jones Act was designed to protect — has registered its objections through trade groups and Congressional allies, arguing that successive waivers undermine investment in U.S.-flagged vessels and the American shipyard workforce. Rep. Donald Case has been among those calling for robust monitoring of how the waiver is being deployed, warning that open-ended exemptions risk becoming permanent workarounds that hollow out the domestic industry.
The White House has so far dismissed those concerns, pointing to the scale of the Hormuz emergency as justification for extraordinary measures. Whether the 90-day extension becomes a 180-day extension — or longer — will depend entirely on whether ceasefire negotiations with Iran can reopen the world’s most consequential oil corridor before the August deadline arrives.
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