President Signs DoD Bill with Maritime Provisions into Law

On January 2, 2013, the President signed into law the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2013 including a number of provisions of interest to the maritime industry such as another set of heightened Iran energy, shipping and shipbuilding sanctions. The NDAA overlaps in Title XXXV considerably with respect to many maritime-related provisions with the Coast Guard and Maritime Transportation Act of 2012 signed into law on December 20, 2012. Unusually, the Coast Guard act provisions, although enacted earlier in time, prevail over the NDAA provisions by virtue of a "coordination" provision in the NDAA. The only substantive provisions enacted for the first time in the NDAA are a set of significant changes to the U.S. Maritime Security Program, which sustains 60 privately owned U.S.-flag vessels engaged in the foreign trade, and a clarification of the application of the Federal Acquisition Regulation to the scrapping of National Defense Reserve Fleet vessels.