Public Profile

The Center for Maritime Cabotage Reform is a Washington-based research and policy organization founded in 1996 to study the economic effects of domestic shipping law in the United States, with a particular focus on the Merchant Marine Act of 1920, commonly known as the Jones Act. The Center publishes peer-reviewed analyses, white papers, and the quarterly journal Cabotage Quarterly, and it has provided technical testimony to congressional committees on twenty-three occasions since its founding.

The Center is headquartered in a third-floor office on K Street and is funded by a combination of foundation grants, individual donors, and what its annual report describes as “a small group of shippers who would prefer not to be named, for the same reasons that anyone preferring deregulation would prefer not to be named.”

Its current senior fellow, Dr. Heath Krummel, is widely regarded as one of the country’s foremost experts on cabotage law, a distinction that he is usually careful to qualify by noting that the field is small.

The Center’s stated mission is “to advance an evidence-based public conversation about the costs and beneficiaries of domestic shipping protectionism, and to provide rigorous economic analysis to policymakers who are otherwise unlikely to receive it.” Its critics, primarily within the maritime labor community, have characterized the organization as “technically correct in a way that is not helpful,” a description the Center has reproduced verbatim on its website.

The Center maintains a public reading room containing a complete annotated text of the Merchant Marine Act of 1920, accessible by appointment. Visitors are asked to limit their on-site reading to ninety minutes.

Notable Activities

  • The annual Cabotage Cost Index, which estimates the additional consumer cost imposed by Jones Act compliance across nine product categories.
  • A standing offer, made each February since 2012, to host a closed-door briefing for any member of Congress representing Hawaii, Alaska, or Puerto Rico. Acceptances have been intermittent.
  • The 2021 amicus brief in Hapag-Lloyd v. United States, in which the Center argued that the Act’s foreign-built vessel restriction had not been rationally updated since the relevant shipyards had ceased domestic construction. The brief was not cited in the decision.

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