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.
Much like tariffs – duties on imports – duties on ‘tonnage’ were a much bigger deal historically. They actually get a specific nod in the U.S. Constitution (Article I, Section 10, Clause 3). Whereas tariff rates are assessed on products, duties on tonnage are a charge tied to a vessel’s measured capacity. The First Congress quickly made it part of the new nation’s shipping policy. A duty on tonnage can shape which vessels carry a nation’s trade.
The First Congress thus acted quickly. Its first revenue law was the Tariff of July 4, 1789. And just sixteen days later came the Tonnage Act of July 20, 1789 (1 Stat. 27). Tariff and tonnage duty were twin pillars of the same policy, and they were openly America First: 6 cents per ton on qualifying American-built, American-owned vessels; 30 cents on American-built vessels in foreign ownership; and 50 cents on other vessels. Licensed American coasters generally received annual-payment treatment, while foreign vessels were ordinarily assessed upon entry.
Two hundred thirty-seven years later, Congress is again considering the instrument. The standalone SHIPS for America bills (S. 1541 / H.R. 3151, 119th Congress) would restore standard rates that lapsed in 2010: 13.5 cents per ton from distant foreign ports, capped at 67.5 cents per ton per year. But it would also impose uncapped, inflation-indexed duties of $5.00, $3.50, or $1.25 per ton, depending on a vessel’s ownership, operation, registry, and the owner or operator’s exposure to designated countries, entities, or shipyards of concern.
The SHIPS Act thus hopes to raise revenue for shipbuilding through a sanctions-centered architecture: the substantial rates target specified foreign links, while the ordinary baseline remains negligible.
How negligible? Compare selected landmark rates Congress has legislated, converted to June 2026 dollars, and see where today’s law – and tomorrow’s proposals – fall.
The Ranking
Rates are per ton of the vessel’s statutory measurement and generally apply at each entry unless the law provided an annual-payment rule or cap. The table selects representative or historically significant rates; it is not an exhaustive compilation of every geographic tier, exemption, or country-specific measure. Conversions use the BLS inflation calculator back to 1913 and the Minneapolis Fed’s historical price series before that (method note at the end).
#
Selected charge (year · vessels covered)
Rate per ton
In 2026 dollars
1
1820 · French vessels (retaliation)
$18.00 per entry
≈ $430
2
1812 · foreign vessels, wartime, all charges combined
$2.50 per entry
≈ $49
3
1817 · foreign vessels arriving from ports closed to U.S. ships
$2.00 per entry
≈ $42
4
1804 · foreign vessels, duty plus new “light money”
$1.00 per entry
≈ $22
5
1789 · foreign-built, foreign-owned vessels
50¢ per entry
≈ $9.80*
6
1865 · general entry duty, subject to annual-payment exceptions
30¢ per entry
≈ $6.50
7
1789 · U.S.-built but foreign-owned vessels
30¢ per entry
≈ $5.90*
8
1862 · general entry duty, subject to annual-payment exceptions
10¢ per entry
≈ $3.30
9
1884 · vessels from distant foreign ports
6¢ (30¢/yr cap)
≈ $2.20 ($11 cap)
10
1789 · American-built, American-owned vessels
6¢ per entry
≈ $1.20*
11
1909 · vessels from nearby foreign ports
2¢ (10¢/yr cap)
≈ 74¢ ($3.70 cap)
12
1990 · vessels from distant foreign ports
27¢ ($1.35/yr cap)
≈ 69¢ ($3.45 cap)
13
2006 · vessels from distant foreign ports
13.5¢ (67.5¢/yr cap)
≈ 22¢ ($1.12 cap)
14
Current law · vessels from distant foreign ports
6¢ (30¢/yr cap)
6¢ (30¢ cap)
Selected rates are shown as legislated. The 1804 and 1812 rows show the combined federal tonnage-based burden (base duty, light money, and, in 1812, the wartime surcharge); other rows show individual statutory rates. The table is not exhaustive. An asterisk marks 1789 rates converted using the 1800 price level, the earliest available pre-1913 estimate. Current-law row shaded.
And the modern proposals, for comparison:
Proposal (2025–2026)
Rate per ton
vs. the record
—
USTR proposed penalty duty for Chinese-owned or -operated vessels using Section 301 authority (originally effective Oct. 2025; then suspended for one year on Nov. 10, 2026)
$50 → $140 by 2028 (per net ton, max 5×/yr)
Opening rate roughly matches the War of 1812 combined burden; below 1820
—
SHIPS Act proposed penalty duty based on ownership, operation, registry, and fleet exposure (only for ships operated by foreign entities of concern)
$5.00 / $3.50 / $1.25 per entry; no annual cap; inflation-indexed
Top tier is about half the 1789 foreign rate in real terms
—
SHIPS Act proposed standard tonnage duty (lower duty for nearby ports)
13.5¢ (67.5¢/yr cap)
≈ 1.4% of the 1789 foreign rate, in real terms
The headline finding: the First Congress’s ordinary top tier for foreign shipping – 50 cents per ton – equals roughly $9.80 in today’s money and was generally due at each entry. The SHIPS Act’s top $5.00 penalty, reserved for designated foreign links, is about half the real value of the top rate George Washington signed as part of the ordinary schedule.
How We Got Here
The Founders’ discriminating duties, 1789–1815
The 1789 act set the three-tier structure that would define American navigation policy for forty years: 6 cents per ton on U.S.-built, U.S.-owned vessels; 30 cents on U.S.-built vessels that had passed into foreign ownership; 50 cents on everything else. Congress re-enacted the schedule in 1790 (1 Stat. 135), tightening the once-a-year privilege to licensed American coasters and confirming that foreign vessels in the district-to-district trade paid 50 cents at every entry. This was Madison’s program: make the flag pay.
In 1804 (2 Stat. 299), Congress added “light money” — 50 cents per ton more, on foreign vessels only, nominally for the lighthouses. A foreign ship now owed a dollar a ton, roughly $22 today. When war came, Congress doubled down: the Act of July 1, 1812 (2 Stat. 768) piled an additional $1.50 per ton on foreign vessels, bringing the all-in wartime rate to $2.50 — about $49 per ton today, at every entry.
The navigation war and reciprocity, 1815–1830
Peace brought a pivot from discrimination to conditional reciprocity. The Act of March 3, 1815 (3 Stat. 224) offered to drop the discriminating duties for any nation that dropped its own against American ships – an offer Britain took up within months. In January 1817 (3 Stat. 344), Congress rolled tonnage duties back to the 1790 schedule but aimed a new weapon at Britain’s closed West Indies: $2.00 per ton – about $42 today – on any foreign vessel arriving from a port American ships were barred from, made permanent that March (3 Stat. 369). The Navigation Act of March 1, 1817 (3 Stat. 351) completed the system – closing the coasting trade to foreign vessels outright and subjecting an American vessel to a 50-cent duty unless its officers and at least two-thirds of its crew were U.S. citizens or otherwise not subjects of a foreign state. Tonnage policy did not stop at the flag; it reached the crew list.
The extreme entry on the list came in May 1820 (3 Stat. 605): $18.00 per ton – roughly $430 today – on French vessels, retaliation for France’s prohibitive charges on American ships. The dispute culminated in the Convention of Navigation and Commerce of 1822, after which Congress wound the retaliatory duties down. The episode shows that Congress used tonnage duties as bargaining leverage, not merely as a revenue source.
Reciprocity was then generalized – 1824 (4 Stat. 2) and 1828 (4 Stat. 308) – and in May 1830 (4 Stat. 425) Congress eliminated the duty for qualifying American vessels and for vessels of nations that granted reciprocal treatment to American shipping. The broader discriminating-duty and navigation regime coincided with an era in which American vessels carried most of the country’s foreign trade. Congress then shifted from unilateral discrimination toward reciprocity.
The Civil War revival, 1862–1884
War finance brought the duty back. The Act of July 14, 1862 (12 Stat. 558) imposed a general 10-cent-per-ton entry duty, subject to annual-payment treatment for specified coasting, fishing, and nearby foreign trades. In March 1865 (13 Stat. 493), Congress raised the general rate to 30 cents – about $6.50 per ton today – while retaining comparable exceptions. The 30-cent rate survived the war by two decades, codified in the Revised Statutes alongside the old discriminating duties, which remained on the books for the dwindling class of nonreciprocating flags.
The long fade, 1884–1990
Then the retreat began – and it is the retreat, not the founding, that set the modern baseline. The Shipping Act of June 26, 1884 (23 Stat. 57) replaced the 30-cent annual tax with the two-tier structure still recognizable in today’s code: 3 cents per ton per entry (15-cent yearly cap) from nearby foreign ports, 6 cents (30-cent cap) from the rest of the world – with receipts earmarked to the Marine Hospital Service. The 1886 amendment (24 Stat. 79) adjusted geography, not rates. In 1909, the Payne–Aldrich Act cut the nearby-port tier to 2 cents (10-cent cap). And there the rates froze. Through two world wars, the New Deal, and the entire postwar collapse of the American merchant marine, the duty on tonnage sat untouched for 81 years – shrinking with every year of inflation, from about 74 cents (1909 dollars-of-today) toward literal pocket change.
The budget-gimmick era, 1990–today
When Congress finally touched the rates again, it was not maritime policy but deficit arithmetic. The 1990 budget act (P.L. 101-508) more than quadrupled the rates – to 9 and 27 cents – but only as a temporary revenue raiser, extended twice and allowed to lapse in 2002. The Deficit Reduction Act of 2005 (P.L. 109-171) re-raised them at half strength – 4.5 and 13.5 cents – for fiscal years 2006 through 2010. Congress did not extend the increase. Since October 1, 2010, 46 U.S.C. § 60301 has stood at 2 cents per ton (10-cent yearly cap) from nearby ports and 6 cents (30-cent cap) from everywhere else – nominal rates set in 1884 and 1909, never adjusted for the intervening inflation. In real terms, today’s standard distant-port duty is about six-tenths of one percent of the 1789 50-cent tier. CBP calculated that tonnage-tax payments totaled $27.4 million in fiscal 2023; the median vessel paid $1,108 for the year. The old discriminatory tonnage tax and 50-cent light-money provisions technically remain in the code (§§ 60302-60303), but reciprocity exemptions make them dormant for vessels of most major trading nations.
What the record says about the SHIPS Act
Set against this record, the SHIPS Act’s architecture comes into focus. Its Section 202 penalty duty – $5.00, $3.50, or $1.25 per ton depending on ownership, operation, registry, and fleet exposure to countries, entities, or shipyards of concern – is uncapped and inflation-indexed. Its Section 201 Maritime Security Trust Fund revives the 1884 idea of earmarking tonnage receipts to maritime purposes. But the penalty structure inverts the early model. From 1789 to 1830, discrimination was the baseline: foreign shipping paid the highest ordinary rates, and relief was the exception, earned nation by nation through reciprocity. The SHIPS Act makes the low ordinary rate the baseline – 13.5 cents, capped at 67.5 cents per ton per year, roughly 1.4 percent of the 1789 foreign rate in real terms – and reserves the substantial penalties for designated links. After five qualifying payments, the restored standard distant-port duty would reach its annual cap; the vessel would owe no additional regular duty at that rate for the rest of the year.
Only one modern measure has re-entered the historical range: the USTR Section 301 port fee on Chinese-operated vessels – $50 per net ton in October 2025, scheduled to reach $140 by 2028 – which at its opening rate roughly matched the War of 1812 combined burden and at maturity would approach a third of the 1820 anti-French duty. Its fate is instructive: it demonstrated that substantial tonnage-based charges are administratively feasible, but it was suspended for one year beginning November 10, 2025, as part of a trade agreement. The experience also shows how quickly an executive-imposed charge can become a negotiating instrument. The 1820 French duty, by contrast, remained in statute until the 1822 convention produced reciprocal reductions.
As of this writing, the standalone SHIPS Act duties remain prospective. The House-passed FY2027 NDAA, H.R. 8800, incorporated a broad SHIPS for America framework through the Kelly amendment, including a Maritime Security Trust Fund, but omitted the standalone bills’ tonnage-rate changes and transfer of tonnage-tax receipts. H.R. 3151 and S. 1541 remain at the introduced stage and have not received committee markup. The duty on tonnage – one of the fiscal instruments specifically named in the Constitution, and one element of the early republic’s broader navigation policy – still waits at historic lows.
The SHIPS Act is needed now more than ever. American mariners are now over four months into the Administration’s disastrous Jones Act Waiver which is allowing foreign owned, operated and crewed ships the ability to do domestic freight fulfillment in our internal waterways. Congress restoring real duties on tonnage to seriously fund an American merchant marine would restore the confidence needed that this country has to will to sustain American shipping.
A Note on Method
Conversions to present-day dollars use the CPI-U for June 2026 (index 333.952, 1982-84 = 100, per BLS). The official BLS inflation calculator reaches back only to January 1913; for earlier years this article uses the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis historical CPI estimates, which begin in 1800. The 1789-90 rates are therefore converted at the 1800 price level, the earliest available, and rounded more heavily than later figures. All rates were checked against the Statutes at Large page scans linked throughout; readers can compare every figure with the original enacted text.
Two caveats. First, “tons” are not constant: early acts taxed registered tonnage under rules different from today’s net tonnage, so the figures show scale rather than exact vessel-to-vessel equivalence. Second, ships are vastly larger today, so the per-vessel burden has fallen less steeply than the per-ton rate. But the per-ton rate is what Congress legislates, and by that measure the basic verdict stands: current ordinary rates are a small fraction of what was historically considered necessary.
MADE IN AMERICA.
CPA is the leading national, bipartisan organization exclusively representing domestic producers and workers across many industries and sectors of the U.S. economy.
Ranking America’s Duties on Tonnage
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.
Much like tariffs – duties on imports – duties on ‘tonnage’ were a much bigger deal historically. They actually get a specific nod in the U.S. Constitution (Article I, Section 10, Clause 3). Whereas tariff rates are assessed on products, duties on tonnage are a charge tied to a vessel’s measured capacity. The First Congress quickly made it part of the new nation’s shipping policy. A duty on tonnage can shape which vessels carry a nation’s trade.
The First Congress thus acted quickly. Its first revenue law was the Tariff of July 4, 1789. And just sixteen days later came the Tonnage Act of July 20, 1789 (1 Stat. 27). Tariff and tonnage duty were twin pillars of the same policy, and they were openly America First: 6 cents per ton on qualifying American-built, American-owned vessels; 30 cents on American-built vessels in foreign ownership; and 50 cents on other vessels. Licensed American coasters generally received annual-payment treatment, while foreign vessels were ordinarily assessed upon entry.
Two hundred thirty-seven years later, Congress is again considering the instrument. The standalone SHIPS for America bills (S. 1541 / H.R. 3151, 119th Congress) would restore standard rates that lapsed in 2010: 13.5 cents per ton from distant foreign ports, capped at 67.5 cents per ton per year. But it would also impose uncapped, inflation-indexed duties of $5.00, $3.50, or $1.25 per ton, depending on a vessel’s ownership, operation, registry, and the owner or operator’s exposure to designated countries, entities, or shipyards of concern.
The SHIPS Act thus hopes to raise revenue for shipbuilding through a sanctions-centered architecture: the substantial rates target specified foreign links, while the ordinary baseline remains negligible.
How negligible? Compare selected landmark rates Congress has legislated, converted to June 2026 dollars, and see where today’s law – and tomorrow’s proposals – fall.
The Ranking
Rates are per ton of the vessel’s statutory measurement and generally apply at each entry unless the law provided an annual-payment rule or cap. The table selects representative or historically significant rates; it is not an exhaustive compilation of every geographic tier, exemption, or country-specific measure. Conversions use the BLS inflation calculator back to 1913 and the Minneapolis Fed’s historical price series before that (method note at the end).
#
Selected charge (year · vessels covered)
Rate per ton
In 2026 dollars
1
1820 · French vessels (retaliation)
$18.00 per entry
≈ $430
2
1812 · foreign vessels, wartime, all charges combined
$2.50 per entry
≈ $49
3
1817 · foreign vessels arriving from ports closed to U.S. ships
$2.00 per entry
≈ $42
4
1804 · foreign vessels, duty plus new “light money”
$1.00 per entry
≈ $22
5
1789 · foreign-built, foreign-owned vessels
50¢ per entry
≈ $9.80*
6
1865 · general entry duty, subject to annual-payment exceptions
30¢ per entry
≈ $6.50
7
1789 · U.S.-built but foreign-owned vessels
30¢ per entry
≈ $5.90*
8
1862 · general entry duty, subject to annual-payment exceptions
10¢ per entry
≈ $3.30
9
1884 · vessels from distant foreign ports
6¢ (30¢/yr cap)
≈ $2.20 ($11 cap)
10
1789 · American-built, American-owned vessels
6¢ per entry
≈ $1.20*
11
1909 · vessels from nearby foreign ports
2¢ (10¢/yr cap)
≈ 74¢ ($3.70 cap)
12
1990 · vessels from distant foreign ports
27¢ ($1.35/yr cap)
≈ 69¢ ($3.45 cap)
13
2006 · vessels from distant foreign ports
13.5¢ (67.5¢/yr cap)
≈ 22¢ ($1.12 cap)
14
Current law · vessels from distant foreign ports
6¢ (30¢/yr cap)
6¢ (30¢ cap)
Selected rates are shown as legislated. The 1804 and 1812 rows show the combined federal tonnage-based burden (base duty, light money, and, in 1812, the wartime surcharge); other rows show individual statutory rates. The table is not exhaustive. An asterisk marks 1789 rates converted using the 1800 price level, the earliest available pre-1913 estimate. Current-law row shaded.
And the modern proposals, for comparison:
Proposal (2025–2026)
Rate per ton
vs. the record
—
USTR proposed penalty duty for Chinese-owned or -operated vessels using Section 301 authority (originally effective Oct. 2025; then suspended for one year on Nov. 10, 2026)
$50 → $140 by 2028 (per net ton, max 5×/yr)
Opening rate roughly matches the War of 1812 combined burden; below 1820
—
SHIPS Act proposed penalty duty based on ownership, operation, registry, and fleet exposure (only for ships operated by foreign entities of concern)
$5.00 / $3.50 / $1.25 per entry; no annual cap; inflation-indexed
Top tier is about half the 1789 foreign rate in real terms
—
SHIPS Act proposed standard tonnage duty (lower duty for nearby ports)
13.5¢ (67.5¢/yr cap)
≈ 1.4% of the 1789 foreign rate, in real terms
The headline finding: the First Congress’s ordinary top tier for foreign shipping – 50 cents per ton – equals roughly $9.80 in today’s money and was generally due at each entry. The SHIPS Act’s top $5.00 penalty, reserved for designated foreign links, is about half the real value of the top rate George Washington signed as part of the ordinary schedule.
How We Got Here
The Founders’ discriminating duties, 1789–1815
The 1789 act set the three-tier structure that would define American navigation policy for forty years: 6 cents per ton on U.S.-built, U.S.-owned vessels; 30 cents on U.S.-built vessels that had passed into foreign ownership; 50 cents on everything else. Congress re-enacted the schedule in 1790 (1 Stat. 135), tightening the once-a-year privilege to licensed American coasters and confirming that foreign vessels in the district-to-district trade paid 50 cents at every entry. This was Madison’s program: make the flag pay.
In 1804 (2 Stat. 299), Congress added “light money” — 50 cents per ton more, on foreign vessels only, nominally for the lighthouses. A foreign ship now owed a dollar a ton, roughly $22 today. When war came, Congress doubled down: the Act of July 1, 1812 (2 Stat. 768) piled an additional $1.50 per ton on foreign vessels, bringing the all-in wartime rate to $2.50 — about $49 per ton today, at every entry.
The navigation war and reciprocity, 1815–1830
Peace brought a pivot from discrimination to conditional reciprocity. The Act of March 3, 1815 (3 Stat. 224) offered to drop the discriminating duties for any nation that dropped its own against American ships – an offer Britain took up within months. In January 1817 (3 Stat. 344), Congress rolled tonnage duties back to the 1790 schedule but aimed a new weapon at Britain’s closed West Indies: $2.00 per ton – about $42 today – on any foreign vessel arriving from a port American ships were barred from, made permanent that March (3 Stat. 369). The Navigation Act of March 1, 1817 (3 Stat. 351) completed the system – closing the coasting trade to foreign vessels outright and subjecting an American vessel to a 50-cent duty unless its officers and at least two-thirds of its crew were U.S. citizens or otherwise not subjects of a foreign state. Tonnage policy did not stop at the flag; it reached the crew list.
The extreme entry on the list came in May 1820 (3 Stat. 605): $18.00 per ton – roughly $430 today – on French vessels, retaliation for France’s prohibitive charges on American ships. The dispute culminated in the Convention of Navigation and Commerce of 1822, after which Congress wound the retaliatory duties down. The episode shows that Congress used tonnage duties as bargaining leverage, not merely as a revenue source.
Reciprocity was then generalized – 1824 (4 Stat. 2) and 1828 (4 Stat. 308) – and in May 1830 (4 Stat. 425) Congress eliminated the duty for qualifying American vessels and for vessels of nations that granted reciprocal treatment to American shipping. The broader discriminating-duty and navigation regime coincided with an era in which American vessels carried most of the country’s foreign trade. Congress then shifted from unilateral discrimination toward reciprocity.
The Civil War revival, 1862–1884
War finance brought the duty back. The Act of July 14, 1862 (12 Stat. 558) imposed a general 10-cent-per-ton entry duty, subject to annual-payment treatment for specified coasting, fishing, and nearby foreign trades. In March 1865 (13 Stat. 493), Congress raised the general rate to 30 cents – about $6.50 per ton today – while retaining comparable exceptions. The 30-cent rate survived the war by two decades, codified in the Revised Statutes alongside the old discriminating duties, which remained on the books for the dwindling class of nonreciprocating flags.
The long fade, 1884–1990
Then the retreat began – and it is the retreat, not the founding, that set the modern baseline. The Shipping Act of June 26, 1884 (23 Stat. 57) replaced the 30-cent annual tax with the two-tier structure still recognizable in today’s code: 3 cents per ton per entry (15-cent yearly cap) from nearby foreign ports, 6 cents (30-cent cap) from the rest of the world – with receipts earmarked to the Marine Hospital Service. The 1886 amendment (24 Stat. 79) adjusted geography, not rates. In 1909, the Payne–Aldrich Act cut the nearby-port tier to 2 cents (10-cent cap). And there the rates froze. Through two world wars, the New Deal, and the entire postwar collapse of the American merchant marine, the duty on tonnage sat untouched for 81 years – shrinking with every year of inflation, from about 74 cents (1909 dollars-of-today) toward literal pocket change.
The budget-gimmick era, 1990–today
When Congress finally touched the rates again, it was not maritime policy but deficit arithmetic. The 1990 budget act (P.L. 101-508) more than quadrupled the rates – to 9 and 27 cents – but only as a temporary revenue raiser, extended twice and allowed to lapse in 2002. The Deficit Reduction Act of 2005 (P.L. 109-171) re-raised them at half strength – 4.5 and 13.5 cents – for fiscal years 2006 through 2010. Congress did not extend the increase. Since October 1, 2010, 46 U.S.C. § 60301 has stood at 2 cents per ton (10-cent yearly cap) from nearby ports and 6 cents (30-cent cap) from everywhere else – nominal rates set in 1884 and 1909, never adjusted for the intervening inflation. In real terms, today’s standard distant-port duty is about six-tenths of one percent of the 1789 50-cent tier. CBP calculated that tonnage-tax payments totaled $27.4 million in fiscal 2023; the median vessel paid $1,108 for the year. The old discriminatory tonnage tax and 50-cent light-money provisions technically remain in the code (§§ 60302-60303), but reciprocity exemptions make them dormant for vessels of most major trading nations.
What the record says about the SHIPS Act
Set against this record, the SHIPS Act’s architecture comes into focus. Its Section 202 penalty duty – $5.00, $3.50, or $1.25 per ton depending on ownership, operation, registry, and fleet exposure to countries, entities, or shipyards of concern – is uncapped and inflation-indexed. Its Section 201 Maritime Security Trust Fund revives the 1884 idea of earmarking tonnage receipts to maritime purposes. But the penalty structure inverts the early model. From 1789 to 1830, discrimination was the baseline: foreign shipping paid the highest ordinary rates, and relief was the exception, earned nation by nation through reciprocity. The SHIPS Act makes the low ordinary rate the baseline – 13.5 cents, capped at 67.5 cents per ton per year, roughly 1.4 percent of the 1789 foreign rate in real terms – and reserves the substantial penalties for designated links. After five qualifying payments, the restored standard distant-port duty would reach its annual cap; the vessel would owe no additional regular duty at that rate for the rest of the year.
Only one modern measure has re-entered the historical range: the USTR Section 301 port fee on Chinese-operated vessels – $50 per net ton in October 2025, scheduled to reach $140 by 2028 – which at its opening rate roughly matched the War of 1812 combined burden and at maturity would approach a third of the 1820 anti-French duty. Its fate is instructive: it demonstrated that substantial tonnage-based charges are administratively feasible, but it was suspended for one year beginning November 10, 2025, as part of a trade agreement. The experience also shows how quickly an executive-imposed charge can become a negotiating instrument. The 1820 French duty, by contrast, remained in statute until the 1822 convention produced reciprocal reductions.
As of this writing, the standalone SHIPS Act duties remain prospective. The House-passed FY2027 NDAA, H.R. 8800, incorporated a broad SHIPS for America framework through the Kelly amendment, including a Maritime Security Trust Fund, but omitted the standalone bills’ tonnage-rate changes and transfer of tonnage-tax receipts. H.R. 3151 and S. 1541 remain at the introduced stage and have not received committee markup. The duty on tonnage – one of the fiscal instruments specifically named in the Constitution, and one element of the early republic’s broader navigation policy – still waits at historic lows.
The SHIPS Act is needed now more than ever. American mariners are now over four months into the Administration’s disastrous Jones Act Waiver which is allowing foreign owned, operated and crewed ships the ability to do domestic freight fulfillment in our internal waterways. Congress restoring real duties on tonnage to seriously fund an American merchant marine would restore the confidence needed that this country has to will to sustain American shipping.
A Note on Method
Conversions to present-day dollars use the CPI-U for June 2026 (index 333.952, 1982-84 = 100, per BLS). The official BLS inflation calculator reaches back only to January 1913; for earlier years this article uses the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis historical CPI estimates, which begin in 1800. The 1789-90 rates are therefore converted at the 1800 price level, the earliest available, and rounded more heavily than later figures. All rates were checked against the Statutes at Large page scans linked throughout; readers can compare every figure with the original enacted text.
Two caveats. First, “tons” are not constant: early acts taxed registered tonnage under rules different from today’s net tonnage, so the figures show scale rather than exact vessel-to-vessel equivalence. Second, ships are vastly larger today, so the per-vessel burden has fallen less steeply than the per-ton rate. But the per-ton rate is what Congress legislates, and by that measure the basic verdict stands: current ordinary rates are a small fraction of what was historically considered necessary.
MADE IN AMERICA.
CPA is the leading national, bipartisan organization exclusively representing domestic producers and workers across many industries and sectors of the U.S. economy.
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