The White House unveiled a sweeping Maritime Action Plan (MAP) on Friday, a 36-page strategy document designed to rebuild what President Trump has described as “America’s maritime dominance.”

The plan stems from an executive order signed last April and lays out a broad set of initiatives, from shipyard investment incentives and mariner training programs to regulatory rollbacks intended to stimulate domestic shipping.

At the centre of the blueprint is a proposal likely to have significant implications for ocean freight: the introduction of a new US port fee on foreign-built vessels. Framed as a national security measure, the plan argues that ships constructed overseas but benefiting from access to US trade should help fund the revival of American maritime capacity. To that end, it proposes assessing a security fee on such vessels each time they call at a US port.

Unlike previous flat-fee concepts, the MAP envisions calculating the charge based on the weight of imported cargo carried by a vessel. The document outlines a range of hypothetical scenarios, suggesting that a levy of one cent per kilogram could generate approximately $66 billion over a decade, while a 25-cent charge could raise close to $1.5 trillion over the same period.

Notably, the plan does not directly address the separate port fee introduced by the US Trade Representative (USTR) in October 2025. That measure, which also targeted non-US-built ships, was suspended until November 2026 following US-China trade talks and China’s retaliatory tariffs. It remains unclear whether the USTR fee will ultimately be reinstated.

Although the MAP sets out a potential framework for new port charges, it is a policy roadmap rather than draft legislation. As a result, key details — including implementation timelines and the ultimate cost burden on carriers and shippers — remain unresolved, leaving industry stakeholders facing considerable uncertainty.