Updated March 18, 2026 at 1:45 PM EDT

The White House has temporarily rolled back a law that requires all goods traveling between U.S. ports to be moved on American-made and American-crewed ships, as the ongoing war with Iran has spiked energy prices across the country.

"President Trump's decision to issue a 60-day Jones Act waiver is just another step to mitigate the short-term disruptions to the oil market as the U.S. military continues meeting the objectives of Operation Epic Fury," White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a statement on social media.

"This action will allow vital resources like oil, natural gas, fertilizer, and coal to flow freely to U.S. ports for sixty days, and the Administration remains committed to continuing to strengthen our critical supply chains."

The Jones Act, a 1920 statute designed to support domestic trade, requires that products traveling from one American port to another must do so on American-owned ships that are built in America, use an American crew and fly the American flag.

Temporarily waiving this act opens up domestic shipping routes to foreign-flagged vessels, in hopes of reducing shipping costs and speeding up deliveries.

The goal would be to give Americans some economic relief, particularly at the gas pump, where prices are up some 92 cents a gallon from this time a month ago as a result of the war in Iran. But experts on the Jones Act say that a short-term waiver will do little to dramatically lower prices.

They note that oil prices are set independently of transportation costs. The waiver would simply allow additional ships to carry supplies.

"The impact will be minimal," says William Doyle, a former commissioner of the U.S. Federal Maritime Commission under the Trump and Obama administrations and CEO of the Dredging Contractors of America trade association. If there are any savings at all, he says, it would be just fractions of a penny per gallon.

Doyle says that among all the factors that go into the cost of gas — from oil transportation to federal and state taxes — any costs associated with the Jones Act would be negligible.

"All of your gasoline prices — 40%, sometimes up to 50% — are based on the world market per barrel cost … It has nothing to do with the Jones Act."

And oil prices aren't likely to come down as long as Iran continues to choke the Strait of Hormuz, through which about 20% of the world's oil supplies passes.

The American Maritime Partnership, a maritime industry lobbying group, criticized the White House's decision on the Jones Act as dangerous to American workers.

"We are deeply concerned about this 60-day, broad waiver being abused and unnecessarily displacing American workers and American companies. The law sets a high bar: this waiver exists solely to address an immediate threat to military operations, not to displace American workers or reward foreign operators," the group said in a statement.

"We also reiterate that this waiver will not reduce gas prices. The maximum potential impact of domestic shipping on the cost of gasoline nationwide is less than one penny per gallon."

But opponents of the Jones Act say that the real way to see extended savings for American consumers is to do away with the law altogether.

"It's an inefficiency in the market. And anytime you have inefficiencies, it leads to higher costs," says Colin Grabow, associate director at the Cato Institute's Herbert A. Stiefel Center for Trade Policy Studies.

Grabow, a self-described "professional advocate for free trade," says that because U.S. labor and supply costs are so expensive, it often makes more sense for American refineries to import oil from places like South Korea rather than move it internally from coast to coast.

"After you factor in the cost of transportation, it doesn't make any sense," Grabow says.

Grabow says that the requirement that the ships be built in the United States is the biggest downside because U.S. shipyards aren't competitive with other nations.

"U.S.-built ships cost about five times more than those built overseas. They cost about four times more to operate. There aren't a lot of them. So this adds up to some very costly shipping … [which] is particularly pronounced in the movement of energy products," he says.

"We don't have the industry. It's a total failure. And I think we need to move on from it."

Copyright 2026 NPR