Bipartisan duo of lawmakers to introduce ‘Ships for America Act’ following election

WASHINGTON — A bipartisan and bicameral duo of lawmakers say they plan to introduce legislation aimed at boosting the United States’ civilian and defense maritime industries following the upcoming election.

Sen. Mark Kelly, D-Ariz. and Rep. Mike Waltz, R-Fla. plan to introduce their “Ships For America Act” following the November election, which they said today at an event hosted by the Center for Strategic and International Studies has garnered support among shipbuilding executives.

“We need to make it more cost effective to operate US-flagged vessels with some cargo preference,” said Kelly. “We need regulatory reform and some financial support to the industry, like tax credits, and then building up our shipbuilding capacity to make sure that we’re going to be able to have more US-flagged ships here at home, and then the workforce [shortage] issue.

“This legislation addresses all [of] those areas extensively,” he continued.

Kelly and Waltz have spent the past year publicly floating a handful of ideas that, in their view, would bolster the country’s maritime industrial base, both the commercial shipping side as well as military shipbuilding. During the event at CSIS, the duo said they supported a maritime czar of sorts — a single individual inside the executive branch whose authorities span across maritime issues related to both the Defense and Transportation Departments.

Waltz’s Florida district encompasses the city of Jacksonville, also home to a Naval Air Station Jacksonville. While Kelly’s state of Arizona is less invested in shipbuilding directly, the senator is a graduate of the Merchant Marine Academy and has been vocal about urging lawmakers to take action to address a national shortage in merchant mariners.

Earlier this year, Waltz and Kelly, along with signatures from more than a dozen other lawmakers, sent a letter to the White House calling on the administration to “prioritize U.S. maritime defense.”

“The group [of lawmakers] called on the president to establish an interagency maritime policy director, designate maritime infrastructure as ‘critical infrastructure,’ invoke the Defense Production Act (DPA) for shipbuilding, and develop a whole-of-government maritime ‘de-risking’ strategy to reduce dependency on Chinese maritime infrastructure and industry,” according to a statement from the lawmakers’ offices released alongside the letter.