AMO National Executive Vice President Tom Bethel participated in the recent car carrier safety conference sponsored in Philadelphia by Interocean American Shipping.
The Jones Act appears secure in the current political climate, but the domestic shipping law is always open to threat, the Maritime Cabotage Task Force said in March.
As the new commander of the U.S. Navy's Military Sealift Command, Rear Adm. Robert D. Reilly Jr. manages a fleet of more than 120 government-owned and chartered ships, as well as a workforce of more than 10,000 personnel operating worldwide.
The U.S. Navy is looking anew at the possibility of manning some combatant vessels with civilian merchant mariners, according to Chief of Naval Operations Mike Mullen.
The U.S.-flagged roll-on/roll-off ship Northern Lights--built in the U.S. for commercial service in the Pacific Northwest and manned in all licensed positions by American Maritime Officers--confirmed the national security benefit of the Jones Act during two years of Persian Gulf service in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom, the Maritime Cabotage Task Force noted in March.
The White House March 27 withdrew the nomination of David Sanborn to lead the Maritime Administration in the Department of Transportation.
United States military operations in Afghanistan and Iraq would not have been possible without the men and women of the American merchant marine, top U.S. defense strategists said recently.
Amidst the political fallout from the scrapped DP World U.S. ports deal, renewed Congressional pressure has been brought to bear on the Department of Homeland Security to launch a Transportation Worker Identity Card (TWIC) system.
A Senate panel March 27 was urged to reject a proposal to make U.S. merchant mariner documents and licenses available to citizens of three countries in the South Pacific.
