The 2026 Jones Act waiver has not been shown to meet its legal test, opened America’s coastwise trade to Chinese- and Russian-linked ships, and produced no demonstrated national fuel-price relief. It should expire on August 16.
The SHIPS for America Act treats the duty on tonnage chiefly as a sanctions tool – a penalty reserved for adversary-linked shipping – while leaving the standard duty at rates the Founders would have mistaken for a rounding error. Here is a ranking of selected landmark federal rates from 1789 to today, in 2026 dollars.
The Committee hearing on shipbuilding took place on July 22. Like everything else tied to global trade, China competition was the impetus to building a shipbuilding and modern port infrastructure industry domestically.
For the first time on record, the United States makes barely a quarter of the medicine it needs.
President Trump’s revision to the steel tariff in 2025 was meant to fix the tariff inversion problem – situations where we tariff steel imports, but not things made of steel. Putting a tariff on metal can imports, but not metal cans filled with food, is a perfect example of mindless tariff inversion driving offshoring. This precise problem was solved and settled in 1930, and Commerce and USTR can fix it at any time with existing authority.
Meanwhile, Others Call for Tariffs on Lamb Meat, Sugar and Steel-Making Ores
Companies making goods from the Department of War (DoW) will now need much clearer visibility into their supply chains, especially if a product they make or buy includes critical minerals.
Trade structured to support production raises productivity, and rising productivity raises the incomes that fund consumption durably, out of earnings instead of borrowing. That is the only durable answer to the cost-of-living crisis: paychecks that can carry the price of housing, healthcare, and childcare.
Last week, the White House declared an emergency under Section 318 of the Tariff Act of 1930 and suspended, for eight months, the collection of anti-dumping and countervailing duties on phosphate fertilizer from the Kingdom of Morocco.
The goods deficit for May is the worst looking deficit on paper, at $106.4 billion, but might not be as bad as that number suggests.
