Alaska Senator Pushes to Let Cruise Ships Bypass Canada Amid Trade War

Amid an escalating trade war, an Alaska senator wants the U.S. to allow cruise ships to sail from Seattle to Alaska without stopping at a Canadian port.

Alaska Sen. Dan Sullivan on Friday told an Alaska radio show that he would begin pushing for an exemption to the Passenger Vessel Services Act, which requires cruise ships not built and registered in the U.S. sailing to Alaska to either start their itineraries in Canada or stop in a Canadian port during them.

That law was last in the news in 2021 when the U.S. created an exemption for the law during the early days of the COVID-19 cruise restart. The exemption allowed ships to bypass Canada, which was under stricter pandemic protocols than the U.S. at the time, on their way to Alaska, essentially saving the 2021 Alaska cruise season.

Then-Sen. Lisa Murkowski unsuccessfully sought to make the change permanent, explaining that the rule put Alaska tourism at the mercy of the Canadian government.

Sullivan made the comments in response to a British Columbia premier announcing intentions to introduce legislation to place a toll on commercial truckers traveling through Canada into Alaska.

Sullivan said that changes could be made to the Passenger Vessel Services Act either by Congress or by executive order, and the change could “really hurt” Canadian tourism coming from cruise ships.

“You don’t want to mess with Alaska,” Sullivan told Mike Porcaro of 650-KENI in Anchorage. “If you do, we’re going to work hard on having our cruise ships bypass your ports, and that’ll help our economy tremendously, it’ll help our tourism industry tremendously, and it’ll really hurt their tourism.”